Environmental Effects of the Bottled Water Industry

Environmental Effects of the Bottled Water Industry

Environmental Science

Environmental Effects of the Bottled Water Industry

I myself am a firm believer in drinking only bottled water under the belief that it is safer, cleaner, and better tasting. I also believed that the bottled water industry couldn't be polluting the environment. After all how could something so natural be bad for the environment? In the research that follows I will explain just how wrong I really was in my beliefs. I will show that bottled water is in many cases similar in makeup to regular tap water. I will also show that the bottled water industry is degrading our environment and wasting energy in the process.

The bottled water industry is a nearly $10 billion dollar a year business in the United States alone and is growing at a rate of about 10% each year. (See Graph Below)

U.S. BOTTLED WATER MARKET

Volume and Producer Revenues

2001 - 2006(P)

Millions of Annual Millions of Annual

Year Gallons % Change Dollars % Change

2001 5,185.2 9.7% $6,880.6 12.6%

2002 5,795.7 11.8% $7,901.4 14.8%

2003 6,269.8 8.2% $8,526.4 7.9%

2004 6,806.7 8.6% $9,169.4 7.5%

2005 7,537.1 10.7% $10,012.5 9.2%

2006 (P) 8267.0 9.7% $10,980.0 9.7%

(P) Preliminary

Source: Beverage Marketing Corporation

Here in the United States we consume around 7-8 billion gallons of bottled water annually. This is compared to hundreds of billions of gallons of tap water which costs around 10,000 times less than comparable amounts of bottled water. But we in the United States seem to be consuming more and more of this product even though we have access to high grade potable municipal water from the taps in our homes.

Municipal water is regulated by the EPA which has very strict standards and guidelines that must be followed in order to keep a municipality running. Bottled water on the other hand is regulated only by the FDA which has only a few less strict guidelines that must be followed to allow operation. In addition bottled water is only tested for quality only a couple times a day while its municipal counterpart is tested hundreds of times daily. Municipal water is cleaned and transported in a highly energy efficient manner where as bottled water is the result of many energy wasting processes.

Municipal water is simply treated potable water that flows from your local municipality to your home through an intricate series of underground pipes that use very little energy. On the other side bottled water is mainly municipal water that is put through more filtration or water that is pumped from the company's private wells and treated for sale. The real energy wasting comes in the shipment and distribution of bottled water to store shelves all over the world. You have to factor in that bottled water must be bottled, packaged, shipped, stocked, and sold. All of these processes eat up electricity, fossil fuels, and the ozone layer. The bottling and packaging plant runs on energy which in most cases comes from coal or other fossil fuels to power equipment. The shipping process relies on boats, ships, trains, and trucks to transport the product all over the world. These processes all eat up the nonrenewable resource known as fossil fuel. More importantly is the burning of these fossil fuels causing the creation of unburned hydrocarbons which have been linked to the depletion of the ozone layer and global warming. Another amazing aspect of the bottling process is the bottle itself which is made up of PET (polyethylene terepthalate) which is made up of the nonrenewable resource known as crude oil. The bottled water industry creates about 2.7 million bottles made up of PET annually which converts to about 1.5 million barrels of crude oil.