Editor's Note: Don't miss our breaking news regarding Gaiam’s BPA admission after reading this post.

Gaiam may be best known among the public at large as a retailer of all things yoga in an age that can't get enough of low-impact, vaguely spiritual forms of exercise. But being the U.S.'s largest creator and distributor of fitness and yoga DVDs (Gaiam owns more than half of the U.S. market, has over 7,000 store-within-a-store displays at major retailers nationwide, and distributes tens of milions of direct-mail catalogs a year) and one of the country's top retailers of reusable aluminum water bottles (one industry source ZRecs spoke with considered them the second or third biggest player in the metal water bottle market, depending on whether you consider the now-shamed SIGG to be down for the count) - that's just the beginning.

Gaiam's gift has always been selling products using original (and often high-quality) content, and in the last decade Gaiam has become as much of a media empire as a retail giant. The company is a prolific pillar of the LOHAS community ("lifestyles of health and sustainability," a term Gaiam's founder coined in the 1990s to better describe their customer than the not-quite-right "cultural creatives,"), thanks in part to acquisitions of the Lime.com content site (ranked among the top 35,000 websites worldwide by Alexa.com), Gaiam's absorption of Whole Foods' ailing WholePeople.com site in exchange for a minority stake in the content-rich direct retail portal Gaiam.com (yep, Whole Foods owns 49.9% of Gaiam.com), and Gaiam also purchased the biggest LOHAS community site online (Gaia.com, which boasts nearly 300,000 members and contributes to Gaiam.com's ranking in the top 3,000 websites, according to Alexa).

In other words, if you have a sustainable bone in your body (and for your sake, I certainly hope that you do!) you probably interact with someone who is drawing their paycheck from Gaiam.

So here's where I spell it out. Millions of U.S. consumers were shocked and dismayed to discover that SIGG aluminum water bottles contained "trace amounts" of bisphenol-A, particularly because they had purchased those bottles thinking they were making a healthy and environmentally responsible choice. BPA is bad for people and it is bad for marine life, at a minimum. If that's why people bought SIGG bottles, I'm going to guess that it's also why people bought Gaiam's aluminum water bottles.

My goal in this post is to lay out evidence that makes it crystal clear that Gaiam is doing exactly what SIGG did prior to their announcement that their water bottles contained BPA. Whether Gaiam is working on a solution to this problem, as SIGG reportedly spent two years doing and then another year rolling out while consumers continued to buy their BPA-containing bottles under questionable assumptions - well, that's anyone's guess, at least for now. But I suspect that a lot of people, like me, expected more from a company that has claimed the title of cultural visionary on health and on personal, if not corporate, transparency.

First, I'll show why we believe Gaiam is not telling you the whole story about their aluminum water bottles and the endocrine-disrupting, yogi-hating chemical we like to call "the big B." I'll source and provide links throughout. Then I'll tell you why this situation bothers us as much as, if not more than, the hard truths we learned about SIGG.

Gaiam marketed their aluminum water bottles as BPA-free six months ago. Why'd they stop?

This is a scan from Gaiam's printed Spring 2009 catalog showing the description of Gaiam's aluminum water bottles.

Our BPA-free aluminum water bottle keeps your water clear and fresh, while keeping disposable water bottles out of landfills. Generous, 20-oz. size with ring-top screw cap (Grass features sports top). Choose from six new designs. 9 3/4" H x 2 3/4" diameter. China.

Here's a link to a PDF we uploaded of the catalog cover and interior page.

Here's a scan from the printed Fall 2009 catalog. Note the change:

Now in even fresher designs and colors, our exclusive aluminum bottles keep your water clear and fresh, while keeping disposable water bottles out of landfills. Generous, lightweight bottle with ring-top screw cap (Grass features sports top) is 100% recyclable. 750 ml. 9 3/4" H x 2 3/4" diameter. Hand wash. China.

Here's a link to that one.

The product page for Gaiam's aluminum water bottle with "Rocky Mountain" graphics, as viewed on Friday, Sept. 25, 2009, appeared identical to that of every other aluminum water bottle Gaiam sells. Here's a direct link to the page.

From the "Product Description" tab: "Reusable, leak-proof aluminum bottles keep your water free from harmful plastic residues."

From the "Product Story" section:

Why Aluminum?
- 86% of plastic water bottles used in the United States end up in landfills, taking up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.
- Transporting bottled water consumes approximately 1.5 million barrels of fossil fuels per year. Help reduce this number by carrying a refillable bottle.
- Americans are currently adding 30 million PET water bottles to our landfills every day.
- When you use an aluminum bottle, your water remains free of unhealthy plastic residues.
Sources: American Recycling Institute and Natural Resources Defense Council.

And, a little further down:

Gaiam bottles are coated with a thin, food-grade epoxy resin that meets the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) 175.300 requirements for toxic elements in foodware. FDA requirements call for testing that meets EPA guidelines. Our manufacturer comprehensively tested the bottle lining, cap and gasket for Bisphenol-A (BPA) using the EPA 3550C method and no detectable levels of BPA were found in the gasket, the cap or the coating material.

Sound familiar?

We don't have screen captures of life before the word "BPA" was banned from Gaiam's aluminum water bottle product descriptions, but we do have something almost as good. Scrubbing a website is hard. Look at these cached (and still live) search results, which link to Gaiam product pages.


Here's a detail shot from those results.



If there is still any doubt in your mind as to whether Gaiam has secretly developed a BPA-free coating for its aluminum water bottles and is just too humble to take credit for it, take a look at the product information they provide for their stainless steel water bottles:


It seems pretty clear to us what Gaiam is up to here. What's more frustrating is that like SIGG, Gaiam has not been shy about profiting from consumers' flight from polycarbonate plastic. Although Gaiam hasn't formally admitted - yet - to their "epoxy resin" lining containing BPA, and could thus be argued to be in a slightly better strategic position than SIGG was after CEO Steve Wasik came clean, we have the clear record of recent claims of their bottles' BPA-free status, which no one turned up in SIGG's case (and SIGG maintains isn't there to be found).

But there are three things about Gaiam's current situation that feel particularly - well, unenlightened.

1. Gaiam's bloggers are not connecting the dots

Numerous Gaiam-funded bloggers have discussed the issue of BPA in water bottles. On the official Gaiam site Gaiam Life, blogger Janet Forgrieve's article "What Type of Reusable Water Bottle Is Best?" appears alongside a "Related Products" column that showcases three Gaiam aluminum water bottles. She writes:

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health are conducting ongoing studies into the effects of the chemical but did release preliminary data last year showing that neonatal exposure to low levels of BPA in rats caused cancerous growths.

Manufacturers and retailers that sell plastic bottles in the United States reacted by switching over to BPA-free polycarbonate bottles.

Should you switch to a metal water bottle?
You can avoid plastics altogether with a reusable stainless steel or aluminum water bottle. Unlike BPA-free plastics, they’re not made from petroleum products. Metal water bottles are more durable than plastic, and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration requires that aluminum bottles sold in America be lined to eliminate the possibility of metals leaching into the drinking water inside.

She went on to conclude that "To do right by both your health and your planet, grab a BPA-free reusable water bottle made of the most eco-friendly material you can find." In our view, the circle of inference was complete.

In a republished "EarthTalk" column - "Are plastic water bottles a health hazard?" - also published on Gaiam Life, the anonymous authors were more direct:

Studies have indicated that food and drinks stored in such containers - including those ubiquitous clear Nalgene water bottles hanging from just about every hiker's backpack - can contain trace amount of Bisphenol A (BPA), a synthetic chemical that interferes with the body’s natural hormonal messaging system. ... According to the Environment California Research & Policy Center, which reviewed 130 studies on the topic, BPA has been linked to breast and uterine cancer, an increased risk of miscarriage, and decreased testosterone levels. BPA can also wreak havoc on children’s developing systems. (Parents beware: Most baby bottles and sippy cups are made with plastics containing BPA.)

Most experts agree that the amount of BPA that could leach into food and drinks through normal handling is probably very small, but there are concerns about the cumulative effect of small doses.

Safer choices include bottles crafted from safer HDPE (plastic #2), low-density polyethylene (LDPE, AKA plastic #4) or polypropylene (PP, or plastic #5). Consumers may have a hard time finding water bottles made out of #4 or #5, however. Aluminum and stainless steel water bottles are also safe choices and can be reused repeatedly and eventually recycled.

(The link, of course, takes BPA-concerned readers to Gaiam's online store.)

Either of these examples are hard to fault their authors for - although both are undated, it's likely they were written months before our collective post-SIGG hangover.

Things are not so rosy on Lime. Belinda Miller's "SIGG, How Could You?" is a case where it's hard to imagine publishing a piece under that masthead - it says it right there, "A GAIAM COMPANY" - without doing a little pondering.

I wrote about Sigg back in 2006 and was specifically impressed that they did not leach toxic residue into liquids. I trusted their claims about their "proprietary water-based resin"... baked onto the aluminum bottle. Exceeding FDA standards, Sigg asserts that the "liner is safe, petroleum-products free, and will not leach aluminum or any synthetic residue." Now I see that they did not specifically say they didn’t contain BPAs, but they certainly committed a sin of omission given that parents all over were freaking out about BPA and they positioned themselves as a safe option. I was new to my Momster mission, and more trusting that companies wouldn’t lie just to sell product. And we’ve used our Sigg bottles continuously since, blissfully ignorant. ... So now Sigg says that yes, bottles made before 2008 did contain BPA, but they still didn’t leach BPA. But their new liners are BPA-free. So, I feel kinda OK that they don’t leach harmful chemicals, but really mad that Sigg led us to believe that their bottles were BPA-free. And can I trust them now? It’s a frustrating world if you’re asking questions and trying to be aware.

Indeed.

2. Gaiam's customer service department is still stating, if pressed, that their bottles are BPA-free

We documented three calls to Gaiam's customer service over the course of three days. Our statements below are paraphrased, because we weren't writing those down. The customer service reps' statements are direct quotes.

Our first call reached Tiffany, a customer service representative who was very friendly and helpful. I asked her whether Gaiam bottles contained BPA, because SIGG had had some problems with that. "Really?" she said. "Yes," I said. "And I was calling to find out if Gaiam aluminum water bottles use BPA, too."

"Gaiam bottles are BPA-free."

"Really?" I asked. "What does that mean, exactly?"

Tiffany laughed. "It means they are not made with BPA."

Our second call hit their after-hours call center, some third party they outsource to. I didn't ask the customer service representative's name.

"Do Gaiam aluminum water bottles contain BPA?" I asked him.

"Just a minute," he said. He put me on hold and came back a minute or so later and said, "Gaiam bottles are coated with a thin, food-grade epoxy resin that meets the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) 175.300 requirements for toxic elements in foodware. FDA requirements call for testing that meets EPA guidelines. Our manufacturer comprehensively tested the bottle lining, cap and gasket for Bisphenol-A (BPA) using the EPA 3550C method and no detectable levels of BPA were found in the gasket, the cap or the coating material."

Me: "Yes, I saw that on the website. I don't really understand what that means."

CSR: "It means that the liner itself has been tested by the FDA and has been tested for BPA."

Me: "But that doesn't tell me if there was BPA used to make it. Is there BPA in the lining?"

CSR: "It's not in it, basically. There's no BPA in them at all."

We tried another call with the day shift, with Jenni placing the call this time in case we got Tiffany again. We didn't. We got Pam. In our exchange with Pam, she used all of the following phrases: "Food-grade epoxy," "resin polymer," and "What is BPA?" Again, when pressed, we got the information we seemed to be looking for. "It does not have it," she said.

3. Gaiam won't tell us the sensitivity of their BPA testing, let alone answer the question "Do they contain BPA?"

We contacted Gaiam through multiple channels in an attempt to get testing data that would show us the sensitivity of BPA testing they did on their aluminum bottles, despite the fact that SIGG's example has proven that this is a poor substitute for transparency regarding the materials used in the production of the product, information every company has ready access to.

We contacted Gaiam's internal marketing department. We called CEO Lynn Powers' office directly. We passed messages to Gaiam through multiple levels of their PR agency. We asked for excerpted details from their testing data, for any information that might contradict our assessment of the situation, and finally for a simple public statement about the issue we were about to raise in this post. We outlined the evidence we had accumulated and told them they could respond proactively, or reactively.

Gaiam, one of the world's most proactive companies since its founding in the mid-1970s, has chosen to react.

The customers are coming

As we prepared this article for publication, we went through the reviews and customer questions in every aluminum water bottle listing on Gaiam.com, wondering if we'd turn up any interesting statements from Gaiam officials. What we found, instead, was a silence that is revealing a company that practically owns the term "Conscious Consumerism" as distant, opaque, and out-of-touch.

This is what is beautiful about the Internet - unanswered questions [link|screenshot], the volumes spoken by silence, and consumers' ultimate refusal, however long in coming, to accept the mantra "Trust us" as any way to live. (Follow the link above if you'd like to ask second one industrious customer's unanswered question.)

Here's a slideshow of screen captures from many of the pages discussed in this article:



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Editor's Note: Don't miss our breaking news regarding Gaiam’s BPA admission after reading this post.