January 20, 2008 | Water, Being Green, Lifestyle, News
Bottled water. Fast Company clued us in last summer as to why it’s just. so. bad. Care for a run-down?
- The US is one of the top consumers of bottled water, but it also has one of the cleanest tap water supplies in the world (i.e., we don’t need bottled water here, but other countries do - and they don’t have it). One in six people in the world doesn’t have clean drinking water. But for us in the developed world, it’s an indulgence.
- It takes 3-5 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water. That’s not because they’re filtering out so much ‘gunk’ - it’s because it takes that much water to produce the plastic and actually bottle the water.
- Over 24% of bottled water sold in the US is just tap water bottled by Coca-Cola or Pepsi. That’s right. The very same stuff that comes out of your tap. Maybe filtered a bit more than yours, but still tap water. You could get the same stuff (much cheaper) by putting a filter on your tap.
- Municipal water supplies go through more stringent testing than bottled water. So what’s in your tap might actually be better for you than what’s in the bottle. Seriously.
- In the US we move 1 billion bottles of water a week. That’s the equivalent of 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water. And since water weighs 8 1/3 pounds per gallon, it’s too heavy to actually fill an 18-wheeler - they have to leave empty space.
- Municipal water costs 1/2000th the price of bottled water. Cha-ching!
- We pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year–in excess of $1 billion worth of plastic.
But it seems that consumers are finally starting to show concern over the impact, or so Christian Science Monitor tells us. Fiji bottled water has pledged to go carbon negative by 2010 (carbon negative? Impressive!). Poland Spring has an Eco-Shape bottle that uses 30% less plastic than their regular bottles. Other companies are using biodegradable plastics to make their bottles, so that the bottles will break down more easily in landfills.
It’s a step in the right direction, and we have to give kudos to Fiji water - not stopping at carbon-neutral but actually going carbon-negative. But still, of the seven points listed above, the majority of these efforts only impact #7. Perhaps water bottlers are making efforts to jump on the green train - and who isn’t these days? But the fact of the matter is, filtered tap water, made portable by reusable bottles like those made by Sigg, Klean Kanteen, and others - is infinitely greener, cheaper, and just makes more sense.
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