Saturday
Mar032007
the cost of water
Saturday, March 3, 2007 at 03:25PM
Many thanks to Aaron Sands, who posted this article on his blog recently. This is from the San Francisco Chronicle. The original can be found HERE. Makes you think, huh?
The real cost of bottled water
Jared Blumenfeld, Susan Leal
Sunday, February 18, 2007
San Franciscans and other Bay Area residents enjoy some of the nation's highest quality drinking water, with pristine Sierra snowmelt from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir as our primary source. Every year, our water is tested more than 100,000 times to ensure that it meets or exceeds every standard for safe drinking water. And yet we still buy bottled water. Why?
Maybe it's because we think bottled water is cleaner and somehow better, but that's not true. The federal standards for tap water are higher than those for bottled water.
The Environmental Law Foundation has sued eight bottlers for using words such as "pure" to market water that contains bacteria, arsenic and chlorine. Bottled water is no bargain either: It costs 240 to 10,000 times more than tap water. For the price of one bottle of Evian, a San Franciscan can receive 1,000 gallons of tap water. Forty percent of bottled water should be labeled bottled tap water because that is exactly what it is. But even that doesn't dampen the demand.
Clearly, the popularity of bottled water is the result of huge marketing efforts. The global consumption of bottled water reached 41 billion gallons in 2004, up 57 percent in just five years. Even in areas where tap water is clean and safe to drink, such as in San Francisco, demand for bottled water is increasing -- producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy. So what is the real cost of bottled water?
Most of the price of a bottle of water goes for its bottling, packaging, shipping, marketing, retailing and profit. Transporting bottled water by boat, truck and train involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. More than 5 trillion gallons of bottled water is shipped internationally each year. Here in San Francisco, we can buy water from Fiji (5,455 miles away) or Norway (5,194 miles away) and many other faraway places to satisfy our demand for the chic and exotic. These are truly the Hummers of our bottled-water generation. As further proof that the bottle is worth more than the water in it, starting in 2007, the state of California will give 5 cents for recycling a small water bottle and 10 cents for a large one.
Just supplying Americans with plastic water bottles for one year consumes more than 47 million gallons of oil, enough to take 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, according to the Container Recycling Institute. In contrast, San Francisco tap water is distributed through an existing zero-carbon infrastructure: plumbing and gravity. Our water generates clean energy on its way to our tap -- powering our streetcars, fire stations, the airport and schools.
More than 1 billion plastic water bottles end up in the California's trash each year, taking up valuable landfill space, leaking toxic additives, such as phthalates, into the groundwater and taking 1,000 years to biodegrade. That means bottled water may be harming our future water supply.
The rapid growth in the bottled water industry means that water extraction is concentrated in communities where bottling plants are located. This can have a huge strain on the surrounding eco-system. Near Mount Shasta, the world's largest food company, Nestle, is proposing to extract billions of gallons of spring water, which could have devastating impacts on the McCloud River.
So it is clear that bottled water directly adds to environmental degradation, global warming and a large amount of unnecessary waste and litter. All this for a product that is often inferior to San Francisco's tap water. Luckily, there are better, less expensive alternatives:
-- In the office, use a water dispenser that taps into tap water. The only difference your company will notice is that you're saving a lot of money.
-- At home and in your car, switch to a stainless steel water bottle and use it for the rest of your life knowing that you are drinking some of the nation's best water and making the planet a better place.
The real cost of bottled water
Jared Blumenfeld, Susan Leal
Sunday, February 18, 2007
San Franciscans and other Bay Area residents enjoy some of the nation's highest quality drinking water, with pristine Sierra snowmelt from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir as our primary source. Every year, our water is tested more than 100,000 times to ensure that it meets or exceeds every standard for safe drinking water. And yet we still buy bottled water. Why?
Maybe it's because we think bottled water is cleaner and somehow better, but that's not true. The federal standards for tap water are higher than those for bottled water.
The Environmental Law Foundation has sued eight bottlers for using words such as "pure" to market water that contains bacteria, arsenic and chlorine. Bottled water is no bargain either: It costs 240 to 10,000 times more than tap water. For the price of one bottle of Evian, a San Franciscan can receive 1,000 gallons of tap water. Forty percent of bottled water should be labeled bottled tap water because that is exactly what it is. But even that doesn't dampen the demand.
Clearly, the popularity of bottled water is the result of huge marketing efforts. The global consumption of bottled water reached 41 billion gallons in 2004, up 57 percent in just five years. Even in areas where tap water is clean and safe to drink, such as in San Francisco, demand for bottled water is increasing -- producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy. So what is the real cost of bottled water?
Most of the price of a bottle of water goes for its bottling, packaging, shipping, marketing, retailing and profit. Transporting bottled water by boat, truck and train involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. More than 5 trillion gallons of bottled water is shipped internationally each year. Here in San Francisco, we can buy water from Fiji (5,455 miles away) or Norway (5,194 miles away) and many other faraway places to satisfy our demand for the chic and exotic. These are truly the Hummers of our bottled-water generation. As further proof that the bottle is worth more than the water in it, starting in 2007, the state of California will give 5 cents for recycling a small water bottle and 10 cents for a large one.
Just supplying Americans with plastic water bottles for one year consumes more than 47 million gallons of oil, enough to take 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, according to the Container Recycling Institute. In contrast, San Francisco tap water is distributed through an existing zero-carbon infrastructure: plumbing and gravity. Our water generates clean energy on its way to our tap -- powering our streetcars, fire stations, the airport and schools.
More than 1 billion plastic water bottles end up in the California's trash each year, taking up valuable landfill space, leaking toxic additives, such as phthalates, into the groundwater and taking 1,000 years to biodegrade. That means bottled water may be harming our future water supply.
The rapid growth in the bottled water industry means that water extraction is concentrated in communities where bottling plants are located. This can have a huge strain on the surrounding eco-system. Near Mount Shasta, the world's largest food company, Nestle, is proposing to extract billions of gallons of spring water, which could have devastating impacts on the McCloud River.
So it is clear that bottled water directly adds to environmental degradation, global warming and a large amount of unnecessary waste and litter. All this for a product that is often inferior to San Francisco's tap water. Luckily, there are better, less expensive alternatives:
-- In the office, use a water dispenser that taps into tap water. The only difference your company will notice is that you're saving a lot of money.
-- At home and in your car, switch to a stainless steel water bottle and use it for the rest of your life knowing that you are drinking some of the nation's best water and making the planet a better place.
Reader Comments (10)
Bingo, Andy. I read a lot of the same things on http://home.howstuffworks.com/bottled-water.htm" rel="nofollow">HowStuffWorks.com, which is a really cool site for surfing.
That's very interesting.
We drink some bottled water, but not because it's cool. The water here in Waco is truly awful. I don't even like to drink Chick-fil-a lemonade here because you can taste the Waco water in it. Positively nasty stuff.
Primarily we use a filter at home, but then we do also buy water bottles simply because I've found I drink more water when I use a water bottle. I use each one for quite awhile before I get another one, though, refilling it from the filtered water.
This article definitely challenges me to make the bottles last even longer and continue my search for a permenant water bottle that I actually like.
(Not sure why I had so much to say on this topic...)
ps. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters" rel="nofollow">Here's another interesting environmental article written in RollingStone magazine about the pork industry. Random, but interesting....and disgusting.
That definitely will make me think twice about buying bottled water. I buy it a lot at school for convenience: I like cold water, and so if I wait and buy it at school, it will be cold instead of room temperature. We use a filter in our apartment, but like Kat I too feel like I drink more water if it's from a bottle, although I can't say why that's so.
I just looked around my room, and there are about 4 different plastic water bottles in here. That's pretty sad.
Crazy! This is absolutely crazy.
hmm. makes me feel guilty for having this bottle of smartwater here beside me.
but this stuff is better than tap water. i am certain of it.
This article is a little dated, but is also very informative:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5467759/
From day one, I was incredulous about bottled water. That noted, in recent years I confess to sometimes drinking the product, always for the sake of convenience. With bottled water available, I don't have to remember a container for drinking tap water. I'm one that prefers water "ice cold" and with bottled water, one almost always gets it that way. Despite all of this, I will make a concerted effort to avoid bottled water in the future. This is a good reminder that the implied health benefits of bottled water are largely bogus, as I've always felt intuitively.
The bottled water industry provides significant jobs and the profits generated do a lot of economic good, largely balancing the alleged environmental concerns. The bottled water industry provides a choice for the buying public. If the public wishes to waste its money on a product with such a high profit margin and dubious value--why argue with them, particularly in light of the benefits it brings to the public and the market?
I'm not much of a consumer of bottled water and will attempt to consume even less now that I have more inspiration, but I don't begrudge the bottled water industry for producing, nor consumers for consuming this product.
Why drink water when you can drink beer?
Oops, I hope I don't lose any gigs for saying that.
Got to weigh in on this, since my career is water science :)
I work mostly with natural water bodies, and not with municipal water, but I want to add at least one note that hasn't been mentioned yet. Tap water has fluoride additives which are especially helpful for tooth health in growing kids. Bottled water has no such requirement. In fact, parents that restrict kids to bottled water only are probably harming their children more than helping them.
Here's the American Dental Association pages:
http://www.ada.org/public/topics/bottled_water.asp
I recommend reading the articles listed under Additional Resources if you have kids and are questioning this.
I have less problem with filtered water.
Very interesting article, Andy. Thanks for passing it along. I feel compelled to mention that the article does not bring up the amount of lead in typical metro drinking water (not sure about S.F, but it's true of most places). Filtering does help with that though, so that is a good way to avoid the bottled water market. I have to respond the the above post by Chuck. Fluoride does have positive effects on teeth, but it's other effects are one of the main reasons I do not let my children drink tap water. This website lists some of the ill effects of fluoride http://www.all-natural.com/fleffect.html, but there are a ton of others out there if you are interested in researching the topic.
http://www.all-natural.com/fleffect.html - the other entry wanted to include the comma in the link.