{"id":442,"date":"2008-03-26T14:38:01","date_gmt":"2008-03-26T19:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2008\/03\/26\/bottled_water\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T15:45:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T20:45:48","slug":"bottled_water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2008\/03\/26\/bottled_water\/","title":{"rendered":"Bottles, Bottles, Everywhere&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>This post is by <a href=\"http:\/\/environmentaldefense.org\/page.cfm?tagID=837\">Ramon Cruz<\/a>, Senior Policy Analyst for Living Cities at Environmental Defense Fund.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s ironic. In many parts of the world, there is no clean drinking water. Here in the U.S., pure, drinkable water flows out of every tap, and yet Americans buy a staggering amount of bottled water. We pay big bucks for it, too &#8211; over $15 billion a year.<\/p>\n<p>Worse of all, the bottles are overflowing our landfills, and contribute to global warming. Take a look at this video from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cs.cornell.edu\/~djames\/bottledWater\/\">Doug James<\/a>, and then check out these surprising facts.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.earth-policy.org\/Updates\/2007\/Update68.htm\">More than a quarter of bottled water is just processed tap water<\/a>, including Pepsi&#8217;s Aquafina and Coca-Cola&#8217;s Dasani. Despite this, bottled water consumption is growing at 10 percent a year, faster than any other beverage. We drink <b>15 times more<\/b> bottled water today than we did in 1976.<\/p>\n<p><b>This doesn&#8217;t mean we&#8217;re healthier, despite the ads.<\/b> Federal regulations for municipal water are far more stringent. Bottled water rules allow higher levels of many contaminants, with more lenient requirements for filtration, testing and reporting. See NRDC&#8217;s bottled water report for details of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nrdc.org\/water\/drinking\/bw\/bwinx.asp\">contaminants by brand<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><b>The Earth isn&#8217;t healthier for it, either.<\/b> According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pacinst.org\/topics\/integrity_of_science\/case_studies\/bottled_water_factsheet.pdf\">Pacific Institute&#8217;s fact sheet [PDF]<\/a>, manufacturing the 30+ billion plastic water bottles we bought in 2006:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Required the equivalent of more than <b>17 million barrels of oil<\/b> &#8211; enough to fuel more than one million vehicles for a year.\u00a0(Note: This was erroneously reported by the <i>New York Times<\/i> as 1.5 million, and the error is repeated in many places.)<\/li>\n<li>Produced more than <b>2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide<\/b>.<\/li>\n<li>Used <b>three times the amount of water in the bottle<\/b>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And these numbers don&#8217;t include transporting the bottles. Nearly 25 percent of bottled water crosses national borders before reaching consumers.<\/p>\n<p>Adding in transportation, the energy used comes to over <a href=\"http:\/\/www.earth-policy.org\/Updates\/2007\/Update68.htm\">50 million barrels of oil equivalent<\/a> &#8211; enough to run 3 million cars for a year.<\/p>\n<h3>Case Study: Fiji Water<\/h3>\n<p>Fiji Water produces more than a million bottles of water a day, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/magazine\/117\/features-message-in-a-bottle.html\">Fast Company<\/a> article). Adding to the irony, Fiji itself uses almost no bottled water, according to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldwater.org\/data20062007\/Table10.pdf\">Pacific Institute report [PDF]<\/a>. They export it.<\/p>\n<p>Shipping Fiji Water around the world increases its environmental footprint. Manufacturing and shipping a one liter bottle produces over half a pound of greenhouse gas emissions, and uses nearly <b>7 times the amount of water in the bottle<\/b>, according to calculations by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.triplepundit.com\/pages\/askpablo-exotic-bottled-water-002401.php\">Pablo P\u00e4ster on TriplePundit<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The heavy use of water is as serious as the greenhouse gas emissions. <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2007\/11\/07\/water_and_energy\/\">Water is fast becoming a scarce resource<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>We Could Recycle, But&#8230;<\/h3>\n<p>Recycling would help, but we don&#8217;t usually do it. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.container-recycling.org\/plasfact\/bottledwater.htm\">Less than 20 percent<\/a> of the 28 billion single-serving water bottles that Americans buy each year are recycled. Some estimates are as low as 12 percent.<\/p>\n<p>According to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.container-recycling.org\/assets\/pdfs\/reports\/2007-waterwater.pdf\">Container Recycling Institute report [PDF]<\/a>, the national recycling rate for all beverage containers is 33 percent. In states with deposit systems, the rate jumps to 65-95 percent. But of the eleven states with deposit laws, only three include containers for non-carbonated beverages (like water), though non-carbonated beverages now comprise 27 percent of the market.<\/p>\n<p>Last November, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a <a href=\"http:\/\/globalwarming.house.gov\/mediacenter\/pressreleases?id=0126\">national bottle bill<\/a> to address global warming that includes water bottles and other non-carbonated beverage containers.<\/p>\n<p>The beverage industry, which long resisted deposit laws, has started to cooperate &#8211; mainly because it sees <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB118843746241213077.html\">bottled water as the answer to the soda sales slump<\/a>. Following months of bad publicity, manufacturers like Coke, Pepsi, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.polandspring.com\/DoingOurPart\/EcoShapeBottle.aspx\">Nestl\u00e9<\/a> have begun making lighter-weight plastic bottles, and are encouraging consumers to recycle.<\/p>\n<h3>Better Yet, Carry Tap Water<\/h3>\n<p>If you buy bottled water, recycle the bottle. But the better solution &#8211; for you and the environment &#8211; is to drink tap water, both at home and at restaurants:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tap water is cleaner than most bottled water.<\/li>\n<li>Tap water is delivered to homes and offices for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodandwaterwatch.org\/water\/bottled\">$0.002 a gallon<\/a>. Bottled water, which can cost as much per gallon as gasoline, is a thousand times more expensive.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The quality of municipal water in the U.S. is generally excellent. Don&#8217;t let the recent reports about pharmaceuticals in tap water deter you &#8211; see this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.treehugger.com\/files\/2008\/03\/pharmaceuticals-in-water.php\">TreeHugger post<\/a> for why.<\/p>\n<p>But if you don&#8217;t trust tap water, or you have old plumbing, or you think tap water tastes funny, then try a water filter like those from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.purwater.com\/\">PUR<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brita.com\/index_us.html\">Brita<\/a>. To learn more about water filters, check out the rated list of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.consumersearch.com\/www\/kitchen\/water-filters\/reviews.html\">water filter review sites<\/a> at Consumer Search.<\/p>\n<p>To carry water with you, use a reusable container filled with tap water. But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thegreenguide.com\/products\/Kitchen\/Plastic_Containers\">don&#8217;t reuse single-use water bottles<\/a>. This can expose you to bacterial build-up and carcinogens leached from the plastic.<\/p>\n<p>Quite a few companies make reusable water bottles. There&#8217;s an ongoing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sierraclub.org\/sierra\/200311\/lol5.asp\">debate about the safety of the polycarbonate plastic<\/a> some use, but there are many safe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2172541\/\">reusable bottles<\/a><b> <\/b>made from other materials.<\/p>\n<h3>Use it or Lose it<\/h3>\n<p>National Geographic&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thegreenguide.com\/doc\/121\/bottle\">Green Guide<\/a> notes, &#8220;&#8230;the federal share of funding for water systems has declined from 78 percent in 1973 to 3 percent today.&#8221; This places the financial burden almost entirely on local governments.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodandwaterwatch.org\/water\/bottled\">Food and Water Watch<\/a> also talks about how important it is to stop this trend and maintain the quality of municipal water. Their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foodandwaterwatch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fs_1803_bottled-water-web.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Take Back the Tap [PDF]<\/a> report gives a detailed overview of the issues surrounding tap water versus bottled water.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think? Can you give up bottled water?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post is by Ramon Cruz, Senior Policy Analyst for Living Cities at Environmental Defense Fund. It&#8217;s ironic. In many parts of the world, there is no clean drinking water. Here in the U.S., pure, drinkable water flows out of every tap, and yet Americans buy a staggering amount of bottled water. We pay big &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"coauthors":[108131],"class_list":["post-442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Bottles, Bottles, Everywhere... - Climate 411<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2008\/03\/26\/bottled_water\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bottles, Bottles, Everywhere... - Climate 411\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This post is by Ramon Cruz, Senior Policy Analyst for Living Cities at Environmental Defense Fund. 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