JillFiled under: Consumer Resources | Tags: ban bottled water, bottled water, plastic recycling
Bottled water is one of my pet peeves, so I’m very happy to see Waterloo Region school banning their sale on school property. I’m sure this decision will be met with opposition, but phooey on the dissenters. There are so many reasons bottled water is bad.
Much of bottled water comes from from the municipal tap water supply. It is the exact same stuff that comes out of the tap at home, bottled, labelled, and wrapped in plastic.
Beyond the excess energy required to manufacture, label and transport the water, who in their right mind would pay anything - let alone a dollar per bottle - for the stuff you get for free?
It turns out lots of people do. University students are famous for keeping bottled water in their apartments for tossing into their backpacks and sucking back after returning home from the bar. For many, it’s convenience that wins them over. Others don’t trust tap water (and don’t know their bottled is from the same source), or are just too lazy to buy, wash and re-fill their own plastic water bottles. A friend of mine used to pack a bottle of water in her lunch - drink it, and throw it out, every day.
A case of bottled tap water costs about $5.00 for 24 bottles, or about 21 cents per bottle. That’s under $3.00 per week; it seems like a steal. But because it’s free from the tap - and because the environmental effects of plastic are heinous - plastic’s environmental impacts are expensive.
Over the course of a year, a single person drinking three bottles per day would put nearly 1100 bottles into the landfill. But wait, what if you recycle?
Recycling is one tool we use to justify wasteful practices. It does help reduce garbage, I suppose, but the energy needed to recycle plastic is high. And most plastics are not recycled into new plastic containers for food, because of potential contaminants. They are made into plastic benches for parks, stepping stones, lunch boxes and eco-friendly jewelry. But at some point, everybody will have more than enough benches and there will be nothing to do with all the plastic bottles.
Plastic does. not. biodegrade.
Does Size Matter?
A popular brand of tap-water bottlers has been running ads in newspapers and magazines lately, promoting a new “eco” bottle that uses less plastic than their previous bottles. This enrages me - multi-national companies with huge advertising budgets finding ways to make themselves look “green” to seduce customers into buying their product. And the savings that comes from using fewer raw materials go right into their pockets, not yours.
If companies like Nestle really cared about the environment, they would stop bottling water.
People who are worried about the quality of tap water should:
a) Read the fine print to ensure they aren’t just buying bottled tap water;
b) Invest in a filtration system;
c) Purchase bulk spring water in reusable plastic jugs;
d) Get involved in making our municipal water supply healthier.
The rest of us should re-evaluate how we look at consumer goods - and ban plastic water bottles from our homes, too.
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Well put. We should also look at ‘Virtual water’, embedded water imported in the form of food, fuel and goods, is a significant part of many nations food security strategy and also a significant portion of water rich countries GDP. For example, the Netherlands depend on foreign water resources for 95% of their water footprint. (Hoekstra and Chapagain 2007)
This tends to work against the most disadvantaged of our population. Every product I use has a water footprint; 900litres of water for 1kg of corn, 140 litres of water for 1 cup of coffee,16000 litres of water for 1kg of beef. (waterfootprint.org 200
If that product was produced where people and ecosystems are water stressed then my consumption is creating a demand responsible for depriving that ecosystem and it’s inhabitants of the water needed to survive or at least have a decent quality of life. This can even be a community near you. Bottled water, aside from being more expensive than gasoline, of no better quality than tap water and producing a huge and totally unnecessary waste stream, is pumped from aquifers. Aquifers all over the world are in decline. Many in the US are in terminal decline. Declining aquifers are susceptible to collapse, a state whereby they will never safely recharge, this threatens food production and public health.
“….. former aquifer strata can be physically or chemically damaged by over-exploitation, with ……. consequences including widespread land subsidence, ph changes and the mobilization of toxic oxidation byproducts such as arsenic compounds.” (WWF Freshwater Program 2006)
As we examine our water usage it is important to consider the embodied water in the products we use. For instance; is the grain I buy or barter for raised in a sustainable manner? Where did the water come from to grow it? Was it pumped from an aquifer, an unsustainable process, or was it brought from surface flow to the field, or even better was it grown using strictly rainfall? This type of information is readily available.
http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/home
http://www.unwater.org/flashindex.html
Let’s consider corn again. Extremely thirsty as a crop to grow it was until recently grown using primarily rainfall. Climate change and the increased demand created by the higher demand for corn as a food and the ethanol industry has meant that more and more of this corporate crop is irrigated. Corn has dire consequences for the environment, reason enough to consider ways of reducing our personal consumption. Corn has a large impact on water supply in agricultural areas. Corn based ethanol is exacerbating the situation. Is the corn I eat encouraging long term damage to aquifers that cities rely on for clean water supply? Can I justify burning corn, a food crop, in my automobile when the impact on water supply is so damaging? For anyone attempting to live a more sustainable lifestyle that next bag of genetically modified corporately farmed corn chips or tankful of E85 should give pause for thought.
This is a tough one for me. I could live on corn chips! Not really but it sometimes seems that way. When available I purchase organic chips, Bearitos blue corn are my favorite. Unfortunately I have yet to find an outlet near me, within a 3 mile walking radius, that carries organic corn chips, though I have to admit not having focused enough on this specific issue. Still, this hasn’t resulted in my giving up corn chips. This requires some introspection. This failure to act is very interesting. hmmmmm……
Comment by C Robb Worthington May 4, 2008 @ 8:25 amKeep up the good work.