A World of Reasons to Ditch Bottled Water
by Union of Concerned Scientists on 07. 9.07
Bottled water manufacturers’ encourage the perception that their products are purer and safer than tap water. Bottled water can cost up to 10,000 times more per gallon than tap water. But the reality is that tap water is actually held to more stringent quality standards than bottled water, and some brands of bottled water are just tap water in disguise. What’s more, our increasing consumption of bottled water—more than 22 gallons per U.S. citizen in 2004 according to the Earth Policy Institute—fuels an unsustainable industry that takes a heavy toll on http://www.treehugger.com/mt/mt.fcgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&id=26153&blog_id=1
A World of Reasons to Ditch Bottled Water | Entries | TreeHugger | Movable Type Publishing Platformthe environment.
Approximately 1.5 million barrels of oil—enough to run 100,000 cars for a whole year—are used to make plastic water bottles, while transporting these bottles burns even more oil.
The growth in bottled water production has increased water extraction in areas near bottling plants, leading to water shortages that affect nearby consumers and farmers. In addition to the millions of gallons of water used in the plastic-making process, two gallons of water are wasted in the purification process for every gallon that goes into the bottles.
Nearly 90 percent of water bottles are not recycled and wind up in landfills where it takes thousands of years for the plastic to decompose.
So the next time you feel thirsty, forgo the bottle and turn to the tap. Because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standards for tap water are more stringent than the Food and Drug Administration’s standards for bottled water, you’ll be drinking water that is just as safe as, or safer than, bottled.
If, however, you don’t like the taste of your tap water or are unsure of its quality, you can buy a filter pitcher or install an inexpensive faucet filter to remove trace chemicals and bacteria. If you will be away from home, fill a reusable bottle from your tap and refill it along the way; travel bottles with built-in filters are also available.
If you’d like to know more about your tap water, the EPA has a list of frequently asked questions about tap water on its Web site. Depending on where you live, you can find a water quality report for your area.
See also: ::FIJI Water Leads Bottled Water Industry In Looking Green(er) and ::Pablo Calculates the True Cost of Bottled Water
A lot of bottled water consumption is because of convenience. Like when you are out and your Nalgene bottle is empty...what to do, fill up at some nasty bathroom? Or get a bottled water.
...Bottled water can cost up to 10,000 times more per gallon than tap water...
That's a pretty astounding difference in prices. And yeah, bottled water is a problem.
Here's another: a AA battery delivers electricity at a cost 10,000 times higher than getting it from your wall plug. Plus AA batteries also have the pollution problem of taking more than 100 years to fester & decompose in our landfills.
A lot of bottled water consumption is because of convenience.
Really? How much. Provide some concrete data.
Like when you are out and your Nalgene bottle is empty...what to do, fill up at some nasty bathroom?
It's called a water fountain. Tap from a faucet is fine, too. If you're terribly concerned about that, wash the spigot with soap.
Or get a bottled water.
Yes, everyone in America died horrible deaths before the advent of widespread bottled water. You're so right.
I enjoy the convience of bottled water. I often refill the container with water a second time before I recycle the container.
Are we so lazy that we can't recycle the contianer????????
"A lot of bottled water consumption is because of convenience. Like when you are out and your Nalgene bottle is empty...what to do, fill up at some nasty bathroom? Or get a bottled water."
Actually, I bet convenience is a really small portion of bottle water consumption. Most of it, in my experience, is people buying crates of bottles at costco and wal mart.
Here's another: a AA battery delivers electricity at a cost 10,000 times higher than getting it from your wall plug.
It's actually about 1,200 to 1.
20 pack of AA Energizers at Walmart = $10.86
Each battery is 2.85 Ah @ 1.5 V = 4.275 Wh/battery
For the 20 pack, that comes to 85.5 Wh total, or 0.0855 kWh.
That translates to $127.02/kWh.
The rolling 12 month average average residential price for electricity in the US 10.47 cents per kWh.
Factor in taxes and fees, and that ratio would decline a bit further, since taxes, fees, and fixed costs (like connection fees) are generally much higher than sales taxes alone (which are also usually charged on an electric bill).
Capitalism offers absolutely no reason for you to say no to the convenience of bottled water. If you can afford it of course.
It's good to see how an environmental viewpoint can bring a little common sense back to things.
"Capitalism offers absolutely no reason for you to say no to the convenience of bottled water. If you can afford it of course."
If you externalize all the costs of bottle water, sure. But even then, it doesn't make much financial sense..
If you internalize the costs, it would be too expensive for most people.
The argument of how damaging bottled water is on the environment is lost on most people and only resounds with the green thinker. They are ignorant and want to stay that way. Except when you start making it about money, then they people pay attention.
So, here is my take on it. A cheaper spring water costs 2 cents resulting in about $2.50 a gallon. Average of 22 gallons is $55/year, but, that number 22 is averaged over all of america, and I don't drink bottled water, nor do most of you, so... What is the number the average bottled water drinker drinks?
1 liter a day would be very conservative resulting in 96 gallons a year, which is $240/year. Fantastic under the sink RO systems, cost $150. The filters cost worst case $100/year if you don't price shop at all. That means after 1 year your ahead, using conservative numbers. Buy a cheaper RO, you win in a few months. Need water for going out, bring it, buy a metal bottle like kleen kanteen. But really do your own math.
bah i meant 2 CENTS PER OUNCE above. damn fingers.
I have to agree with JiltedCitizen on this one, at least for my own personal bottled water consumption. Just last Friday I was doing research outside on a hot day (I am a hydrogeologist, and have been involved in lawsuits involving Perrier and Nestle over water bottling in my state), hours from home. My Nalgene ran empty because I lent some water to a coworker.
I will never drink water from the tap in a gas station bathroom, no matter if there were non-lotion soap available to me to clean it. So I bought a 1L bottle of water.
But then, I agree with Anonymous, my consumption of bottled water is probably not what drives the numbers. At home, I use a pitcher filter.
i use a klean canteen and can't remember have any difficulty filling it up. hopefully most people have enough ingenuity to keep their water bottles filled. it aint rocket science.
Worldwatch just released a new report on bottled water:
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5063
"Global consumption of bottled water more than doubled between 1997 and 2005, securing the product’s place as the world’s fastest-growing commercial beverage. The United States remains the largest consumer of bottled water, but among the top ten countries, India has nearly tripled its consumption, while China more than doubled its consumption between 2000 and 2005."
Well you can't blame India or China for wanting bottled water. Their water might actually kill someone.
We use bottled water because of the fluoride issue. I really don't want my children, or myself for that matter, consuming the amounts of fluoride that is put into city water. I feel like we help the situation a little bit by using Culligan. No plastic for the landfills, at least. Their 5-gallon bottles are reused. Of course, the purification process and such are still an issue. If if wasn't for the fluoride issue, we'd drink tap (using a filter, because I don't like the way it tastes).
but fluoride is good for teeth--one of the major health advances of recent decades.
my dentist recently told me that she is seeing a huge upsurge in cavities in children because parents have taken to providing bottled water at home and so children aren't getting the protection of fluoride...
so maybe we need to be factoring in, as well, the medical waste and tooth filling components that are offset by most people drinking fluoridated tap water but are not found in bottled water....
We use bottled water because of the fluoride issue.
There are a number of filters which take out fluoride.
Bottled water is a $10 BILLION dollar industry in the United States alone. And it's all part of a grander strategy to privatize the world's water systems, including your tap.
So if your tap water tastes poorly, it might be that your city's water system is severly underfunded or is controlled by a corporation, not the same corporation that makes your bottled water, but you'd better believe they have the interest in controlling where and how you get your water.
And no one's yet commented that the corporate water industry spends untold millions to convince you through advertisement that their products are healthier.
On recycling water bottles: Don't take comfort in it. Over 88% of the those bottles are not remanufactured.
Great book to read about this: Thirst, Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water (Alan Snitow, Deborah Kaufman, Michael Fox)
If given a choice between getting something in glass, aluminum or plastic, which is the least harmful overall?
There's an AWFUL lot of facts/stats in this article with no sources.
This post, whether true or not, reads like a chain letter my mother would send me.
There was an article similar to this in the magazine "Fast Company" this month.
Heres the URL to the essay printed in the magazine: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-message-in-a-bottle.html
"Thirty years ago, bottled water barely existed as a business in the United States. Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets--$15 billion. It will be $16 billion this year."
"We pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year--in excess of $1 billion worth of plastic."
"24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi."
"If the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000."
"Fiji Water produces more than a million bottles a day, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water."
I'm a cashier at wal-mart, and whenever i get people buying bottled water, i usually try to tell them about the pros and cons of it.
doesn't address mineral water that comes in glass bottles
At home we drink only mineral water taken from mountain springs. It is because we believe that tap water has trace chemicals (especially insecticides) that are one of the causes of nerve diseases such as fibromyalgia, which has no known cure. Around 2% of the population suffers from fibromyalgia in industrialized countries. Everyone is at risk: it touches both young and old, men and women (although women seem to be especially at risk). There is no medication that has a durable effect on this disease: the best one up to now, Lyrica, has only a temporary and moderate effect. The disease is undetectable by the usual tests: it does not show up on blood tests, scanners, X-rays, etc. Its effect is chronic pain in the articulations and chronic fatigue, which last for years and years and make it difficult to hold a job and which are a major cause of depression.
Fibromyalgia did not exist before the industrial age. It has appeared along with modern industrial civilization. After studying the (quite sparse) literature on the subject in the Medline database and other sources, we suspect the disease is triggered by trace chemicals found in food and tap water, chemicals that come from agriculture using insecticides derived from nerve gases (remember the old Zyklon B - it has not gone away!). These chemicals act on the nervous systems of insects. We suspect that they can also perturb a molecular mechanism in the human brain related to pain.
Modern agriculture uses large quantities of insecticides routinely. It is almost impossible to avoid ingesting trace quantities of these chemicals, unless one lives in a mountainous area with little agriculture and eats only locally grown foods. We hope that medical science will one day find a cure. We hope that agriculture will start moving away from such deadly aids to productivity as pesticides and insecticides. In the meantime, beware of industrial chemicals. Even in trace quantities, they can be extremely dangerous!
Fluoride is the one of the reasons why the teeth of Americans are more healthy a better looking than those of the people of most other countries.
Though there are those towns with undrinkable water (and it's not the fault of fluoride) Florence, AZ is one of them. Not only is the water salty, it has the county wide recognition of being "lupus and cancer water." I would not even filter that stuff. In cases like that I'd much rather reach for a glass of Juice than a glass of tap.
Bottled water is HIGHLY regulated. The media goes after bottled water since its healthy and they're funded by alcohol and soda companies. Why is this site going after them?
I didn't see anyone in my house recently testing the water or out at the curb. Who knows what water picks up in century old plumbing from the source to my tap?!
More water is wasted in producing a can of soda or a bottle of beer.
"We better get rid of bottled water so our kids can go back to drinking soda." Nice message.
Just for the record, some of us drink bottled water because we live in the nation's capitol and don't feel like taking the "lead pipe" gamble when we're out and about.
I know that I use bottled water for the convenience, and I do recycle the bottles, but you can only do that for so long before it becomes unhealthy and the water from the 3 week old bottle tastes bad. I think that after reading this article, I'll finish off the bottles I have in my fridge, recycling them as long as I can, of course, and then just get some sports water bottles I can use for years. I hope the only times I'll have to use bottled water now is if I find myself on the road without my store bought water container. This was a real eye opener for me. I thought for sure more people would recycle bottles from their bottled water!
"an inexpensive faucet filter to remove trace chemicals and bacteria. " note that inexpensive filters may well *add* bacteria. Change the filter often (6months at the outside) or use a not so cheap filter (e.g. SunPure) which has a UV step to kill off the bacteria that breeds in the standard carbon filters.
As for fluroide, if you don't use the city water (or the city doesn't use fluroride, like San Jose Water) make sure you get drops from your kids doctor. I can see why people might want to make sure the dosage is correct (and tap water can't really be! nor will most bottled), but foregoing it entirely for children is a costly mistake. It's adults that may want to avoid it (since it's too late for our enamel ;>)
Bottled water isn't all it is cracked up to be. After attending a large lecture this past March for World Water Day, I ditched my Poland Spring for a durable Nalgene. I wish I remembered the links between bottled water and water scarcity.
I think the article below really ties together some important information:
http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/nbw.asp
I have to agree, from the people I know and my own experience, most bottled water is purchased out of conveniance, not because people think it is better for them.
There are so many products that millions use every day that are so much worse for the environment than bottled water I am a little puzzled why this has become such an issue all of a sudden. I drink bottled water becuase I care about my health and the water in my area tastes like crap, the published water analysis shows that it is right at the upper limit of allowable toxins. (and the tests are done at the plant not after its gone through all the old dirty pipes and out your tap) I tested the ppm of the water it was 800. I ran it through a brita filter and it was 750, not much better i'd say. I have an r o filter (the only way to get your water clean and down to 0 ppm) I think it is a good trend that people are buying less soda and fruit drinks and crap like that and buying bottled water instead. Of course the polution from the plastic bottles is a problem, but we had the same problem when they were buying cokes. It kind of irritates me that the radicals are siding up with the cola industry here. Societies move in baby steps and i'm happy that we're moving from one evil (sugary crap in plastic bottles) to a lesser evil (healthy clensing water in plastic bottles) Of course the ideal solution would be to deliver pure water through our water system to all the outlets, but until that hapens i'm going to still buy bottled water if i don't have access to a clean source. To claim that water from the tap is clean is a lie, to claim that bottled water is as dirty is also a lie, anyone who has taste buds and drinks bottled water can tell what the truth is. How about creating more places for people to recycle and cleaning up our water sources, and delivery systems. That seems more sensible to me.
When people ask me for water at home I sometimes substitute my filtered Poland Springs water for tap water with ice (they never know the difference)
Of course I'm blessed with a private well and good water quality, but still it's a mental thing for most.
Tap water contains chlorine and flouride which are toxic to the human body.
I think it's important to understand what corresponding drink bottled water substitutes for in people's lives. That is, are people drinking bottled water now instead of tap water, or are they drinking bottled water in place of soda? If it's the former, then the popularity of bottled water is a disaster, introducing new plastic bottles into landfills, etc. But if it's the latter, then it's not so clear. Bottling and shipping soda is just as damaging as bottling and shipping water - possibly even more so, and soda is definitely worse for public health than bottled water. So the environmental costs are the same between water and soda, but the water wins out with regards to public health.
For myself, I used to drink a lot of soda - if I was out and about, I'd grab a can of Coke. Nowadays I grab a bottle of water, instead. About as bad for the environment, but better for my health.
Does anyone have any studies they can point to showing which drink (tap water, soda) bottled water replaces in most people's lives?
the irony here is that google ads has pulled an ad for Fiji water :)
No one has even mentioned the dangers of the chemicals that the plastic bottles can add to that water...
Let us not forget the dreadful but REAL fact that many times bottled water has been taken (stolen?) from our country's Native American reservations. In the case of the Navajo Nation, for instance, water is pumped 2,000ft. to the surface where it is used to move coal to Los Angles via a slurry pipeline (Peabody Coal Mine). This is some of the worlds cleanest, purest water. After the coal has been moved, the water is filtered, bottled and sold to clueless citizens. The Natives receive no compensation for the H2O sale because of decades old contracts to which they are now bound. Where does bottled water come from? Who is profiting from the sales? These are legitimate questions as well...
The type of Fluoride used in water is a RAT Poison! It attacks your brain to make you stupid. It's a good mind control substance. Many countries have stop fluoridation of their water supply. Do you believe all the propaganda about bottled water causing increases in cavity? Most of the bottled water are filtered from municipal water. The filtering systems like reverse osmosis do not filter out fluoride because fluoride molecules are so small. This means that most of the bottled water have fluoride in them. If you want flouride -free water, get a Berkley Filter system with the Fluoride filter ($50 extra). I have no financial interest in the Berkey system--just a happy customer. Use www.infowars.com as a referral to get extras free.
I do curbside recycling so I'm out working in hot weather a lot. I take an insulated mug to work and refill it throughout the day at the fountain machines in convenience stores. I've never been charged for ice water and when I refill with a soft drink or Gatorade I usually get a discount for reusing my mug. When I used to buy bottled drinks I paid more and the drinks warmed up before I was done with them. So you see, by refilling my insulated mug I save money, I eliminate my need for one-time use containers, and my drinks stay cold longer. Now that's convenience!
My wife recycles paper, plastic, etc. I tell her that the extra trucks that pick up the stuff spew pollution into the air. The recycling factories that have parking lots full of cars spew more pollution in the air and use energy. The plants that use the recycled stuff have parking lots, need energy, and spew pollution into the air.
Go figure....but it makes everybody feel good about themselves.
jilted citizen and anthonares, i apologize for my hostile comment. what i should have said was that it is that it's not that hard to keep non-disposable water bottle filled, one must just be vigilant about it. it's great to rarely have to buy bottled water anymore.
kasey, it is nice to hear that you speak to customers about water at the check out line!
what disturbs me the most about bottled water is the commodification of water. i agree with jack ian lin's post 100%. thanks for the book link jack.
i think this debate is important because at least it gets people thinking about water, one of our most basic needs to stay alive. we've got governments adding poison to tap water, commodification of water, theft of water, water scarcity, etc. there has to be a point where the people take control of water and stop depending on these power structures for it. any ideas for that?
distill your water
people, don't you see that although most bottled water is crap, all tap water is poison!
It's full of pesticides, herbicides, industrial petrochemicals, industrial waste (including fluoride), dissolved toilet paper and tampons, rust, arsenic, lead, mercury, and other toxins.
Please buy a RO system ($250), then distill your RO water with a cheap ($130) counter-top distiller. you'll have water that is more pure than any bottled water you can buy.
Then, add Cell Food (Lumina Health) for additional dissolved O2, as well as organically bound minerals and high-density colloids. This will be the best thing you can do for your body, period.
This is cheaper than bottled water in the long run, and much better!
My tap water in SC smell very strong of Chlorine. How can I drink it? Filtering tap water does not remove chlorine.
Buckminster Fuller believed that people wouldn't methods until a better version FORCED change. I believe there should be a law banning the manufacture of single use plastic water bottles - the beverage industry must make and use glass or durable plastic bottles that can be recycled and refilled.
Fuel Ghoul has a post dedicated to this subject here
http://roberrific.typepad.com/drunkenmoose/2007/07/the-big-bottled.html