Bottled Water: Wonderful or Wasteful?

Bottled Water: it tastes so good! You know what they say though, too much of a good thing can sometimes be bad. A recent study showed that 200 billion liters of bottled water were sold worldwide. God Bless America, drinking up 33 billion of said liters (averaging to 110 liters per person). This whopping amount is 70% higher than the statistic found six years prior, in 2001. Who knows how much we've been using since 2007- when the statistics for this article were taken. Environmentalists have been arguing that the energy it takes to make and deliver a bottle of water is more than getting the water from the tap.

Luckily, we can thank environmental scientists Peter Gleick and Heather Cooley (from the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California) for calculating how much energy is used in bottled water production and consumption. They concluded that this entire process consumes between 1100 and 2000 times more energy than getting water from the tap. These numbers included how much energy goes into the production of a plastic bottle, purifying the water, labeling the bottle, filling it, sealing it, transporting it, and cooling the water prior to sale and consumption.

Of these stages in the water-bottle consumption, the two that are most energy demanding are manufacturing the bottle and transporting the bottles. Producing the bottles alone uses 50 million barrels of oil in a year. To put that into perspective- it is the same as two and a half days worth of oil consumption in the entire United States. There hasn't been a number put to how much energy it costs to transport the bottles because some travel long distances and some are down the road. The bottles that travel further obviously require more energy, actually, about two and half to four times more energy than it would take to get it locally. (Fiji water, anyone?) In these cases it actually takes more energy just to transport it than it does to make the bottle.

Of course, it would be silly for me to stand on my soap box and not tell you that other environmental scientists have concluded that Gleick and Colley haven't done enough research on tap water. However, it has been confirmed (by these questioning environmental scientists) that the energy it takes to purify and deliver tap water would, in the most expensive of all cases, be hundreds of times less than the energy consumed in bottled-water production and consumption. So, on that note I'll include a shameless plug: Invest in a few Nalgene water bottles and a Brita filtration system. In the long run, it'll cost you- the consumer- less and you can help save our planet one gulp at a time.

Crystal Cabral (Group A; Week 4)

Update: I didn't really get many questions, but to answer one the more eco-friendly plastic that more companies are using DOES actually help. It costs less to make and also takes less time to disintegrate in the ecosystem. I'm glad that some of you took a little advice and decided to bring a nalgene around and use reusable water bottles. On that same note- something else to consider- reusable coffee mugs. They produce less waste (and keep your drinks warmer, longer!)