How often do you see drinking fountains anymore? That once ubiquitous, and free, source of H2O now seems quaint, while bottled water is everywhere you look. In 2006, we consumed over eight billion gallons of the stuff, which was a 10% increase from 2005. That said, more and more of us are starting to question bottled water’s impact on our wellbeing, as well as the effect it has on the environmental wellness.
According to Jenny Powers of the NRDC, ‘Bottled water is an increasingly growing business, and with that comes a whole lot of environmental impact that can be avoided by a turn of the faucet.’ Environmental wellness expert Janet Majeski Jemmott explains, ‘While we struggle to cut down on our consumption of fossil fuels, bottled water increases them. Virgin petroleum is used to make PET, and the more bottles we use, the more virgin petroleum will be needed to create new bottles. Fossil fuels are burned to fill the bottles and distribute them.’ Then you have Stephen Kay of IBWA, who points out that this impact is not just limited to bottled water, but also juices, fizzy drinks and other beverages packed in plastic.
Majeski Jemmott notes, ‘Some brands of water come from islands and countries thousands of miles away, and shipping bottles can cause carbon pollution to spill into the water and spew into the air.’ Todd Jarvis, PhD, associate director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds at OregonStateUniversity, adds that there’s also the waste of the water itself. Jarvis has calculated that, across the globe, it takes about 72 billion gallons of water a year just to make the empty bottles. Therefore, it’s no wonder that David B. Goldstein, co-director of NRDC’s energy program in San Francisco, warns, ‘Bottled water has a significant environmental burden.’ But the environmental toll of water doesn’t end there. Let’s look at a few shocking statistics:
1. Oil: Majeski Jemmott comments, ‘The energy used each year making the bottles needed to meet the demand for bottled water in the United States is equivalent to more than 17 million barrels of oil. That’s enough to fuel over one million cars for a year.’
2. Energy: ‘If water and soft drink bottlers had used 10% recycled materials in their plastic bottles in 2004, they would have saved the equivalent of 72 million gallons of gasoline,’ says Majeski Jemmott. ‘If they had used 25%, they would have saved enough energy to electrify more than 680,000 homes for a year.’
3. Waste: Majeski Jemmott details, ‘In 2003, the California Department of Conservation estimated that roughly three million water bottles are trashed every day in that state. At this rate, by 2013 the amount of unrecycled bottles will be enough to create a two-lane highway that stretches the state’s entire coast.’
4. Greenhouse Gas: ‘In 2004 the recycling rate for all beverage containers was 33.5%,’ Majeski Jemmott states. ‘If it reached 80%, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions would be the equivalent of removing 2.4 million cars from the road for a year.’
5. Long-Term Impact: Majeski Jemmott notes, ‘That bottle that takes just three minutes to drink can take up to a thousand years to biodegrade.’
So why do we keep on drinking it? ‘A big part of the appeal of bottled water is those convenient single-serving bottles,’ says Majeski Jemmott. ‘Yet fewer than 20% of them ever make it to a second life, according to estimates by the Container Recycling Institute. The rest are tossed onto beaches and roadsides and into landfills, where they could be around for a thousand years. Nestlé Waters, Dasani and other bottlers are trying to be greener, introducing lighter-weight bottles that use up to 30 percent less plastic. It’s a good start, but more needs to be done—by them, and by us.’
