Bottled Water and The Environment
What we’re going to talk about today:
Become an informed consumer:
1. Composition of bottled water
2. Environmental impacts
3. Social implications
Why do people drink
bottled water?
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/bottledwater.JPG
http://promotehealth.info
Bottled water benefits
 Easy




delivery of potable water:
Disaster relief
Contaminated public/private water supply
No access to any other supply
Healthier than soda!
How did we get here???

Bottled water has been
popular in Europe for
many decades due to
poor quality tap water
and fondness for
sparkling water
 Bottled water got a
huge break in 1993
with the Milwaukee
cryptosporidium
outbreak
1. Composition &
health implications
http://media.readersdigest.com.au/dynamic
Regulations
Tap Water (EPA)
 Detailed Consumer
Reports (water source,
contaminant test
violations) to consumers
 Microbial tests several
times per day
 Tests 4 times the number
of chemical contaminants
as required by the SDWA
Bottled Water (FDA)
 No reports to consumers
are required
 Microbial Tests once per
week
 Tests for only ¼ of the
chemical contaminants
listed by SDWA
Corvallis Water & SDWA
Effect:
cancer
& liver
damage
Effect:
cancer
Effect:
death
Research on Bottled Water
Contaminants (2008)
 Environmental
Working Group (EWG)
found 38 pollutants in 10 major brands


Average of 8 contaminants per brand
Disinfection byproducts, fertilizer residue, and
pain medication
 Walmart's
Sam’s Choice and Giant's
Acadia store brands bore the chemical
signature of standard municipal water
treatment…
Research on Bottled Water
Contaminants (2008)
 In
other words, it was tap water. The only
differences:


the price tag (bottled water is 1900x more)
the contaminants (the bottled water exceeded
CA state standards for cancer-causing
disinfectant pollutants)
*Environmental Working Group
Environmental Working Group:
Bottled Water Scorecard (2011)

Survey of 173 unique bottled water products

18% fail to list the source and 32% disclose nothing
about the treatment or purity of the water

Only two of 188 bottled water brands listed source,
treatment and purity

Close to half of all bottled water is sourced from
municipal tap water

It takes approximately 2000 times more energy to
produce an equivalent amount of tap water**
*Water Watch 2010 and BMC 2010
**Gleick 2009
EWG Bottled Water Scorecard
2. Environmental Impacts
of the bottles
Path To Market
(International Bottled Water Association)
What is a basin/aquifer, and why does it
matter if we pump water out of it?
http://www.cleanwateroxford.org/watershed.htm
http://www.sciencemadesimple.co.uk/page72g.html
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthgwaquifer.html
Life Cycle Impacts: Production
 It
takes 72 billion gallons of
water per year just to produce
the empty bottles used for
bottled water.
~109,000 Olympic Swimming Pools
**Emily Gersema, Associated Press (2003)
***FAO and Earth Policy Institute (2006)
Life Cycle Impacts: Production
It takes ~900 million gallons
of oil to make empty PET
(Polyethylene terephthalate) bottles for
bottled water.
Life Cycle Impacts: Shipping
“We're moving 1 billion bottles of water around
each week in ships, trains, and trucks in the United
States alone… That's a weekly convoy equivalent to
37,800 18-wheelers delivering water.”
- Message in a bottle by Chris Fishman for www.fastcompany.com (2007)
“A British study has found that drinking a bottle of water has the
same impact on the environment as driving a car a kilometer.
Bottled water production generates 600 times more CO2 than
drinking tap water.”
- http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23238015-1248,00.html#
Life Cycle Impacts: Disposal
 Many plastic bottles are
NOT being recycled.
Recycling rate has fallen
from 54% in 1994 to 47.5%
in 2009.
 US consumes 50 Billion 16ounce Polyethylene
terephthalate (PET) bottles
(167 bottles per person)
Water Follies (2002), www.designinsite.dk,
msnbc, 2005; fast company.com (2007)
Life Cycle Impacts: Disposal
Plastics do not biodegrade, they photodegrade
(They break into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic that are often still
very difficult to reincorporate into ecological systems.)
3. The Business of Water
http://images01.tzimg.com/
Sources of Bottled Water
www.fda.gov
Types of Bottled Water

Artesian Water/Artesian Well Water - Water from a well that taps an
aquifer in which the water level stands at some height above the top of the
aquifer. Not as valuable as Spring Water, but may be the same water.

Drinking Water - Water that is bottled sanitarily without added sweetners or
chemical additives. Flavors, extracts, or essences may be added.

Mineral Water - Water containing no less than 250 parts per million total
dissolved solids. Many times from a geothermal well or spring.

Purified Water - Water from which all minerals and any other solids have
been removed. May also be called distilled, deionized, or reverse osmosis.

Sparkling Water - Water that after treatment, and possible replacement
with carbon dioxide, contains the same amount of carbon dioxide that it had
as it emerged from the source.

Spring Water - Water derived from an underground formation from which
water flows naturally to the surface of the earth. It must be collected only at
the spring or through a bore hole tapping the underground formation.

Well Water - Water from a hole drilled in the ground which taps the water of
an aquifer.
http://www.soc.duke.edu/~s142tm16/glossary.htm
Bottled Water vs. Tap Water

Bottled water is a lot more expensive than tap water.
Corvallis Tap Water = $0.003 per gallon

Brita Filter Pitcher ($25.00) and filter ($8.00) = tap water with the
filter gets us to $0.10 to $0.12 /gal.

Bottled Waters:
Mt. Shasta = $2.56/gal to
Perrier = $5.03/gal
Aquafina = $3.77/gal
Dasani = $3.38/gal
Park City “Ice” Water = $18.00/gal
Bottled Water vs. Tap Water
“It struck me…that all you had to do is take the water
out of the ground and then sell it for more than the
price of wine, milk, or, for that matter, oil.” –Perrier
Chairman (1988)
If the water we use at home cost what
even “cheap” bottled water costs, our
monthly water bill in Mt. Shasta prices
would be over $21,000.
Bottled Water is Big Business
 REVENUES


(2007)
$10 to $15 Billion in U.S
$47.5 to $100 Billion
Worldwide
(Beverage Marketing Corp.
World Water Forum 2006; 2007)
In 2002, bottled water corporations spent $93.8 million for
advertising. (Boston Globe, September 25, 2005)
Profit Margins range from 15% for small bottlers to 600% for
large bottlers (NRDC, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works)
Who Dominates Market In
Oregon?
Nestle = 29%
Crystal Geyser (currently with Dannon)= 20%
Pepsi = 20%
Coca-Cola = 18%
Others = EartH20 and other smaller bottlers who
are our neighbors = 6%
Recent Backlash in US

An Estimated 20
universities have
banned the sale of
bottled water on
campus- not OSU (the
Register Guard Oct 20, 2010)

http://takebackthetap.org/
Should OSU? Why or
why not?
Rethink water!

Take home messages


Actions



Tap water is better regulated than bottled water, plus more
environmentally and socially responsible (lower carbon footprint, less
plastic pollution, not supporting mega corporations)
Carry your own water in a reusable BPA-free bottle, or just drink from
a glass or fountain
If you have to buy a drink that comes in a plastic bottle, read the
label (look for the water source and how it was treated), look for
environmentally friendly bottles, and then REUSE the bottle several
times before you recycle it!
Rethink

Water is essential to life… Should it be for sale?