Message in a bottle: despite the hype, bottled water is neither cleaner nor greener than tap water

E: The Environmental Magazine, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Brian Howard

So why do so many of us trust and prefer bottled water to the liquid that is already piped directly into our homes? For the price of one bottle of Evian, a person can use 1,000 gallons of tap water in the home. Americans spend around $10,700 on bottled water every minute reports Co-op America, and many consumers think nothing of paying three times as much per gallon of bottled H20 as they do for gasoline.

Kay says the IBWA does not intend to promote bottled water as a replacement for tap water, except maybe during emergencies. "Since bottled water is considered a food product by law, it doesn't make sense to single it out as needing more regulations than other foods" says Kay. He also stresses that IBWA guidelines strictly prevent members from trying to capitalize on fears over tap water, or from directly advertising that their products are more pure than municipal water

Bottled water's competition is soft drinks, not tap water, says Kay. Karen from Ames, Iowa posted on the 2000days web diary: "In the summer I buy bottled water more often so I'll have something to drink that's not loaded with syrup and stuff."

Some critics have also found it ironic that many people who purchase bottled water end up refilling the containers from a tap. Clearly, some consumers may be more interested in buying the product for its packaging than for the water itself--or they impulsively purchased a bottle where there was no immediate access to a tap.

The Green Response

More and more environmentalists are beginning to question the purpose of lugging those heavy, inefficient, polluting bottles all over the Earth. The parent organization of the World Wildlife Fund, the Switzerland-based World Wide Fund for Nature, argues strongly that the product is a waste of money and is very environmentally unfriendly. Co-op America concludes: "By far the cheapest--and often the safest--option is to drink water from a tap. It's also the most environmentally friendly option." Friends of the Earth says, "We might as well drink water from the tap and save all this waste."

The WWF argues that the distribution of bottled water requires substantially more fuel than delivering tap water, especially since over 22 million tons of the bottled liquid is transferred each year from country to country. Instead of relying on a mostly preexisting infrastructure of underground pipes and plumbing, delivering bottled water--often from places as far-flung as France, Iceland or Maine burns fossil fuels and results in the release of thousands of tons of harmful emissions. Since some bottled water is also shipped or stored cold, electricity is expended for refrigeration. Energy is likewise used in bottled water processing. In filtration, an estimated two gallons of water is wasted for every gallon purified.

When most people think of bottled water, they probably envision the single-serve plastic bottle, which has exploded in popularity and is now available almost anywhere food products are sold. The WWF estimates that around 1.5 million tons of plastic are used globally each year in water bottles, leaving a sizable manufacturing footprint. Most water bottles are made of the oil-derived polyethylene terephthalate, which is known as PET. While PET is less toxic than many plastics, the Berkeley Ecology Center found that manufacturing PET generates more than 100 times the toxic emissions--in the form of nickel, ethylbenzene, ethylene oxide and benzene--compared to making the same amount of glass. The Climate Action Network concludes, "Making plastic bottles requires almost the same energy input as making glass bottles, despite transport savings that stem from plastic's light weight."