171 billion gallons of fresh water to produce 41 billion gallons of bottled water

According to a Oregon State University study, the consumption of bottled water in America has gone up 2,000 percent between 1978 and 2006, with over 700 brands of bottled water. It is one of the popular products in the market with high profit margins.

To make 41 billions of fresh water, factories use more than 18 million barrels of oil and up to 130 billion gallons of water just to create the plastic bottle and then addition 41 gallons of water to fill the empty bottles. And most of the water that is used to fill the bottles comes from tap water and only a percentage of them comes from actual spring. Even Pepsi admitted that they use tap water to fill their bottled water.

Todd Jarvis, assistant professor in the Water Resources Graduate Program at Oregon State University, and a research hydrogeologist with the OSU institute for water and Watersheds said bottled water is a big business in the tune of $100 billion per year, the profit margins is so huge, everyone wants to participate but at the cost of environment. He said in the article that once his students know the practices behind the bottling industry they just try to avoid purchasing bottled water.

There have always been, and still are some places in the developing world where bottled water is necessary for health concerns and relief efforts,” Jarvis said. “But in most of the world it was a niche item until the 1970s, when Perrier spent millions on advertising, and the industry just took off. It hasn’t looked back since, and now in America we’re spending $20,000 every minute of every day on bottled water.”

Coca-Cola and Pepsi make more money selling bottled water than selling their colas drinks. Jarvis said initially bottled water was all for health reasons but now it is just convenience, taste and has become a fashion for some just to carry bottled water around.

Jarvis said most of the bottled water has tap water, which normally costs 5 cents a gallon but when sold in bottles costs $4 a gallon. No wonder all the big corporations want to jump into this industry.

In the United States, the tap water is among the safest in the world, they have excellent water filtration systems. So, Jarvis says there is no need for bottled water in the US, maybe when traveling abroad.

Another factor the article points out is the tap water undergoes more scrutiny than bottled water because the Food and Drug Administration considers water as a food and has to pass through rigorous standards. Whereas bottled water is not, so anyone can sell bottled water, some of the bottled water contains contaminants even and there is no correlation between safety and bottle water consumption in the US according to Jarvis.

New York City has one of the safest water in the world, yet it consumes more bottled water than any other city in the world.

Everyone considers Spring Water as the safest and purest, but it still may have surface contaminants and still needs processing. Water from deep wells that municipal water supplies get from may be of same quality as spring water in some cases.

Bottled water has a different taste that may be one of its advantages, but if the tap water is filtered by Brita and Pur water filtering systems one can get similar taste as well. Or if they use some thing like LifeSaver bottle, one may get the same taste as spring water.

Also bottling water damages the groundwater supplies by heavy use to generate fewer gallons of fresh water. A high amount of oil and energy are used to create plastic bottles, plus they consume additional energy transporting the bottles to different location before and after bottling. There is too much plastic waste created even with recycling (only a fraction of bottles are recycled, others are thrown to waste). Also see here how much 1 bottled water needs energy and water to produce it.

“If people still want to drink bottled water, I usually recommend purified water, ‘rain’ water or well water from a nearby local source to provide the best combination of purity and environmental sensitivity,” Jarvis said. “But a reasonable alternative is just chilled tap water in a re-usable container. That often removes the chlorine taste that people complain about with tap water, it’s safe, and it’s a lot cheaper.”

I hope everyone listens to Jarvis and help save the environment. We lived without bottled water before, it didn’t kill us then, we survived. With just a few steps we can get the same quality at home.

Do you use bottled water?