Bottled Water: What's All The Fuss? (Part 3)

In my past two blog posts, I've looked at the costs and quality of bottled and tap water. Today, I'm going to see how bottled water measures up to tap water in regards to environmental costs. 

The results of this investigation are not surprising, and at this point, fairly widely known. I would imagine most people, regardless of their taste preferences or thoughts on quality, would agree that bottled water is less environmentally friendly than tap water. 

The reasoning is simple: Bottled water needs to be bottled (duh). Bottles are made of plastic which necessitates oil for its production. The plastic and oil use are polluting our planet and wasting resources. But I should probably be a bit more specific than that...

1. OIL: The creation of the plastic bottle requires oil... and not just a small amount. It's estimated that the production of the plastic bottle, packaging, and capping uses an energy equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil a year. We are depleting an un-reusable resource, using energy that could be used for something else, and polluting the earth in the process. 

2. WASTE: People living in the US purchase about half a billion bottles of water per week. If you laid these bottles of water end to end, they would circle the globe more than 5 times. That's a LOT of waste that is piling up in landfills all over the Earth. We will be feeling the negative repercussions of this waste for centuries to come. 

3. TRANSPORTATION: The water has to get from the bottling facility to the store in which it's being sold. Whether this is by plane, train, car, or donkey, energy and resources are being used. Of course, the exact amount is difficult to measure. Some bottles are manufactured locally. Some are shipped overseas. Regardless, the process demands energy and time and inevitably creates waste. 

4. WATER: Very ironically, it takes 3 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water. Really, this is just ridiculous. The planet is already running out of clean, accessible water. Using water to produce costly, environmentally detrimental water is a waste of this precious resource.

  

I could go into more reasons, but I think the four above make the point pretty clearly. The Bottom Line: The creating and selling of bottle of water depletes our resources, consumes energy, and pollutes. We could avoid all of those things by buying a reusable water bottle and filling it at the tap. So I'm going to do that. Who's with me?