Quick Quiz: Which Bottled Water has a bigger Carbon Footprint?
by Team Treehugger, Worldwide 
on 12.20.06
Marketing website PSFK asked what we thought of this bottled Tasmanian rainwater being shipped all over the world. No peeking at the answer below the fold, we are watching.
All bottled waters are problematic and unneccesary, and obviously the further it travels the worse it is, but what really matters is how things travel. as you can see from the chart, listing the distance a gallon of fuel will move a ton of goods, a ship (we could not find the exact number for a modern container ship but suspect that it is even better than a barge) goes almost seven and a half times as far on a gallon of fuel than a truck.
A ton of tasmanian rainwater travelling 7938 miles by ship uses 15.44 gallons of fuel and emits 342.77 pounds of CO2;
A ton of Poland Springs going by truck travelling 1141 miles from Maine to Chicago uses 16.54 gallons and emits 367.19 pounds of CO2.;
A ton of Evian going from Lake Geneva to Edinburgh by truck uses 15.77 gallons and emits 350.09 pounds of CO2.
This is is a simplistic view and does not take into account the energy used in pumping or making the bottles or getting around in the cities, but it it is probably a good rough guide. In the end they all suck about equally- drink tap or if you must, buy local. Chicago loses doubly, because it has good tap water from the Great Lakes.
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That is very misleading - you didn't state which form of transport was being used.
Also, most ports are some way outside of the places where the products are going to be delivered, so you are inevitably going to pay a lot in extra truck mileage on top of your freighter co2 production.
Tanking water from Australia is just stupid.
Of course once that Tasmanian Rainwater has arrived by ship in San Fracisco it's put into trucks and then distributed around the city/state...
I understand the admonition to drink tap for green reasons, but for health reasons tap water has been shown over and over to have high amounts of dangerous chemicals in it. Even mercury in many places. I would be careful advising people to drink tap water. I guess it's a no win.
Most bottled water is just rebranded tap water, and in no way should be any better than filtered tap water. Ozarka branded water where I live comes from East-Texas which is really scary considering the extreme lack of regulation on logging and petroleum companies in East Texas. I'd rather drink the tap.
Hmm... perhaps as a solution to this we should require bottled water to list the same sort of breakdown that the local water companies are required to do. If people started to realize how "pure" their bottled water was we might see a reduction in its use.
I'm also not sure how this chart was created, and I don't think the math is correct. A new truck for instance gets about 5 miles to the gallon. True, if fully loaded it may be carrying 35 tons of goods, but I don't think one gallon of diesel fuel would move one ton of goods via truck 59 miles. Who's passenger car gets 59 mpg? In the example: A ton of Poland Springs going by truck travelling 1141 miles from Maine to Chicago uses 16.54 gallons... the math works out that the truck acheived 68.98 mpg. OR if you factor this up to a full load of 35 tons of water, to travel the distance of 1141 miles, the truck would have required 578.9 gallons of fuel, or 1.97 miles per gallon.
TreeHugger, what's up with the math on this chart?
Also much bottled water is tap water that has been run through reverse osmosis. Which you can pick up at Home Depot. It will get your water pretty damn pure.
Matt:
You're looking at truck load as either 1 ton or 35 tons. Many trucks are partially full - and many trucks aren't new. Treehugger's math here looks right on - a mostly full, not brand-new truck, just like the average of what's on the road.
I think tap water taste the exact same as bottled water.
I think tap water taste the exact same as bottled water.
Actually,
Los Angeles drinking water is is some of the purest and best tasting in the country, with very acceptably low levels of EPA flagged pollutants that are probably in the background with many other bottled waters.
Aquafina and Yosemite are both "purified" tap water, so for the cost of a Brita, you could have very pure water. Some doctors have even said that it's healthier to drink tap water for the same reason that it's healthy to have kids play in the dirt when they are small; let you immune system do it's job. You also may get some healthy trace minerals in tap water. I'll bet you that the cold rushing water from the granite peaks in the Sierra or Rockies may even have some trace minerals that someone could call "harmful".
Don't forget that bottled water travelling by ship also introduces non-native species to our harbors.