No Impact Man’s recently posted about a US campaign to raise awareness about bottled water and the problems its manufacture and distribution are causing to our environment. Some of the points he’s made are worth thinking about:
- Bottled water is up to 1,000 times more expensive than tap water [see also The real cost of bottled water.]
- Forty percent of bottled water is tap water anyway [I believe this is the case in the US – I wonder what the situation is in Australia?]
- Bottled water is less stringently regulated than the FDA than tap water [in the US again]
- The production and disposable of plastic bottles stresses the habitat we depend upon for our health, happiness and security
- The transportation of water around the world by ship and plane causes unnecessary carbon emissions
- Bottling companies are buying up water rights around the world which means free water may not be available at all in the future.
I also took a look at a 2005 report from Choice, which did give some information that conflicts with some of the info No Impact Man was pointing at – Choice says that:
…there’s no substance to fears that bottled water is contaminated with toxic chemicals from the plastic bottle. … PET (short for for polyethylene terephthalate) has no plasticisers – nothing to leach out into the water.
(New American Dream claims that “Disposable plastic water bottles are not meant for multiple uses.The #1 polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is fine for a single use, but reuse can lead to bacterial growth and leaching of dangerous chemicals.”)
I might have to do some more reading about this, but whether PET is dangerous to human health or not, there’s no question that all those millions of plastic bottles are not doing our environment any good.
I’ve been trying to remember at what point I got over my disdain for bottled water. I can still remember disparaging some of my friends who had started buying bottled water back in the early ’90s, and thinking that it was a ridiculous waste of money when you could just turn on the tap. Somewhere along the way I changed my mind. Did I succumb to marketing?
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Bottled water is evil. A couple of relevant links:
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/petbottles.asp
http://www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx?strip=20081006
Con: did you get cornered by those use-less-bottled-water people on the hill outside the library yesterday?
I’m not sure I’d go so far as calling bottled water ‘evil’, but I certainly think it’s a waste of money. I’ll only buy bottled water when I really really have to, and even then, I’m just as interested in the re-use value of the bottle as I am in the water. There’s nothing wrong with tap water. Does bottled water have flouride in it? If not, tap water would be better for kids.
I also need to do a bit more reading before I can make up my mind about the whole chemicals leaching from plastic thing.
Thanks Tom!
Akkadis no I didn’t see them! What were they doing? I agree that it’s a waste of money to buy bottled water. Thinking about it, some people would probably choose to buy water over soft drink, which health-wise is a far better option. it’s good to be conscious about the environmental costs of our consumption, though. I don’t know about fluoride – my guess is that there isn’t any in bottled water, but that’s only a guess. Definitely time to do more reading!
I’m with you. But I don’t think its necessarily marketing that gets us in. Its convenience. Unless we are like those that by bottled water for home. I don’t like tap water but I have a rainwater tank and we refill our bottles from it. But when we are out and about it’s so easy to buy bottled water and hard to find a water fountain.
I too remember that I used to be disdainful of those who used bottled water. I think that I changed because I wanted the flavoured water because it was easier to buy one of those than get myself a reusable bottle and squash and fill it up daily!
However..that is what I do now! I have ditched the habit!
I was in the city yesterday and carelessly forgot to make any provision for drinking water. So when I became very very thirsty I succumbed and bought a bottle of Mt Franklin… the water fountains were either filthy or the water pressure was so low I would have had to put my mouth unacceptably close to the nozzle to drink. 🙁