Bottled water is a convenience most people are guilty of using, but you should absolutely
stop.
It's got some far-reaching consequences, ranging from environmental to financial.
The bad definitely outweighs the good on this one.
Spending a buck on a bottle of water might not seem like a huge investment, and chances
are good you already know you're paying for the convenience.
Maybe you forgot your own water bottle at home, or you headed out on an unplanned hike
through the park.
But what happens when you start really looking at the numbers?
When the ConvergEx Group started comparing the cost of bottled water to tap water, they
looked at averages across the country and found people were spending around 300 times
more on bottled water than they would have spent on the same amount of tap water.
Oh, and that was based on the price of water by the gallon.
How often do you buy bottled water by the gallon?
When they looked at the 16.9-ounce bottles which make up about two-thirds of the market
sales, the math says you're paying around $7.50 for a gallon.
That's almost 2,000 times the price of the same amount of water that comes out of your
tap, and way more than that gallon of gas you're always complaining about the price
of.
"It's been called the marketing trick of the century.
Would you agree with that?”
“In a way, yes.
Because it could come out of your tap."
It might be more cost-effective to drive home and pick up a reusable water bottle to fill
yourself.
You've probably heard bottled water is incredibly wasteful, and most people think this refers
to the bottles themselves.
But have you ever asked yourself about the water use?
When you pick up a liter of bottled water at the store, how much water do you think
went into making it?
It's more than you think.
According to the International Bottled Water Association and a 2013 survey that looked
at the water use of the industry, it takes an average of 1.39 liters to make a single
liter of bottled water.
That extra .39 liters might not sound like a whole lot, but it adds up fast.
Given that the entire market study included data from the manufacture of 14.5 million
liters, that's 5.66 million liters of wasted water used in final production.
The IBWA points out their total water usage is less than other parts of the beverage industry.
But two wrongs don't make a right, and some environmental groups aren't convinced the
numbers are anywhere near acceptable.
A spokesperson for the Water Footprint Network says the industry's impact is even farther
reaching than that, and when you include the water that goes into making the packaging
materials and bottles, you're looking at more like seven or eight times that number.
Plastic has a life span that's thought to be around 500 years long, and that means the
plastic in every bottle you've ever crumpled up and thrown into the garbage or recycling
bin still exists, and they're piling up.
In 2008, volunteers who participated in Keep America Beautiful's Great American Cleanup
picked up a shocking 189 million plastic water bottles that had been discarded across the
country.
And considering around 200 billion water bottles have been manufactured every year since then,
it's starting to look a little ridiculous.
Plastic also makes up a huge part of what's called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a
massive area of the ocean between the US and Japan where the world's garbage gets caught
in a sort of ocean-wide vortex.
Since plastic doesn't dissolve, all those plastic water bottles that don't make it into
the garbage or recycling bins end up in places like this, worn down into smaller and smaller
pieces.
No one's sure just how much plastic is there, but there are places where the water is little
more than a cloudy soup.
Some measurements have found as much as 1.9 million pieces and bits of plastic in a single
square mile.
Since only about 10 percent of the world's PET plastic actually ends up being recycled,
this is a problem of epic proportions.
If you're still insisting bottled water is worth the cost, consider the fact that you
might just be drinking regular old tap water out of that fancy bottle anyway.
In 2007, Pepsi made a startling announcement.
They were changing their labels to be more transparent about where their bottled water
came from, because their Aquafina was nothing more or less than tap water.
If you happened to read an Aquafina label before that, you would have seen "Bottled
at the source P.W.S."
That's a fancy way of saying it's bottled at a Public Water Source.
It's poor labeling and shady marketing at best.
Pepsi isn't alone here.
Coca-Cola's Dasani is also essentially tap water.
It comes from a public water source, as do some of Nestle's bottled water products.
If it's natural spring water or well water you think you're getting when you open that
bottle, you might find you've been mistaken.
Figuring out whether or not bottled water is actually a safer option than tap water
is a bit tricky, and there are a whole bunch of variables.
If you're living in an area that has a contaminated water supply, then bottled water is the way
to go.
Otherwise, studies are still out on the matter, and most seem to suggest opting for bottled
water isn't really doing you any favors.
According to the Mayo Clinic, bottled water and tap water are pretty much governed by
similar safety standards.
While the FDA regulates the production of bottled water, the EPA oversees the country's
tap water supply.
And the two agencies go pretty much hand-in-hand with what they allow in water.
The FDA considered bottled water to be something of a low-risk food, but bottling plants still
need to be licensed every year.
Even though they're monitored, they're not held to standards that are any different from
the guidelines the EPA uses to monitor drinking water.
And recently, new dangers have been found.
A 2018 study found the overwhelming majority of bottled water brands come with something
unexpected in the bottle: tiny particles of plastic, some bottles with hundreds of pieces
per liter.
A series of investigations revealed some pretty shady things about those companies doing all
the actual bottling.
In 2015, California newspapers did some digging into Nestle, who has been bottling their Arrowhead
water from the resources of the San Bernardino National Forests for years.
They found not only is there no governing body keeping track of just how much water
they're taking out of the forest, but there's no one looking into the possibility that they're
taking so much water it's having a negative impact on the surrounding flora and fauna.
While Nestle says they're not doing anything wrong and they're abiding by the guidelines
that have worked fine for decades, park officials say with ongoing drought conditions, more
needs to be done to make sure there are no long-lasting impacts from Nestle's activities.
Forest Service employees have expressed a growing concern that the unchecked and unmonitored
activities could have a negative impact that starts with the forest's vegetation and spirals
outward from there.
One species of native fish has already disappeared from forest streams, and it's an extinction
linked to flash floods, forest fires, and possibly to the disappearance of some of the
area's natural water supply.
Sporadic drought conditions have been happening a lot, especially in the American West.
The government has monitored drought conditions since 2000, and the longest single span of
drought in California lasted a shocking 376 weeks: from December 2011 to March 2019.
That's led to massive attempts at conserving water and fines for wasting it on what were
deemed non-essential projects, like watering the lawn.
But one thing that didn't stop was the bottled water production of California-based companies
and suddenly, all that wasted water takes on a whole new meaning, doesn't it?
“Recyclops will drown you over water loss!”
At the same time other companies were laboring under water restrictions, the dozens of bottled
water companies escaped scrutiny.
What do they have to say about it?
A spokesman from Southern California's Essentia (which uses tap water) told CNBC,
"I don't see any situation going forward that would stop us from producing bottled water."
In 2009, researchers from the Pacific Institute estimated just how much energy it took to
make the disposable plastic bottles used in the bottled water industry.
They included everything from making the plastic and shaping it into bottles to filling the
bottles, transporting the finished product, and keeping it cold.
Their findings were pretty disturbing.
A single liter of bottled water took between 5.6 and 10.2 million joules of energy.
That's as much as 2,000 times the amount of energy it takes to produce the same amount
of water that comes out of your tap.
We'll put it another way.
Around the time that information was released, the national consumption of bottled water
was around 33 billion liters, and that took the equivalent of between 32 and 54 million
barrels of oil to produce.
Fast forward a bit, and according to The Guardian, consumers were buying these bottles at a rate
of 20,000 per second in 2017, a demand largely centered around bottled water.
Around 480 billion plastic bottles were sold in 2016, and that was an increase of 300 billion
from when the energy consumption survey was done.
Have we learned nothing?
There have been attempts at making bottled water that's better for the planet.
In 2016, The New York Times reported on Just Water, a company that made their completely
recyclable "bottles" out of paper sourced from trees certified by the Forest Stewardship
Council.
They're still only 53 percent paper, though.
The rest of the bottle is mostly plastic, with small amounts of aluminum.
They're not the only ones doing it, either.
A company called Boxed Water is Better is also hopping on the bandwagon of making greener
alternatives, so, are they really greener?
It's complicated.
While these boxed waters are more environmentally friendly than those that are using plastics,
they're still horribly wasteful when compared to the water that comes out of the tap in
your own kitchen.
They still take raw materials, lots of energy, and they're still single-use containers.
Except in emergency situations and in places like Flint, Michigan, the majority of Americans
have constant access to fresh, clean water right in their own kitchens.
There's no reason to put it in a single-use container, whether that's plastic or paper.
We've all done it.
You've finished off the bottle of water you picked up on your way to work, and you might
as well reuse that bottle, right?
Fill it at the water cooler before lunch, and again before you head home?
Actually, you shouldn't, and no, this isn't about toxic chemicals.
All those rumors you've heard about the presence of chemicals that leach into your water from
the plastic just aren't true.
The plastic approved for use in water bottles is perfectly safe for you to drink out of,
but if you refill it, that might not be the case anymore.
And that's because that plastic water bottle is the perfect place for bacteria and fungi
to not just grow, but thrive.
Once they're opened, they're also introduced to all kinds of bacteria that come from your
hands, your mouth, that water cooler… you get the idea.
Since they're not made to be used more than once, they're also susceptible to forming
hairline cracks, and those cracks are also going to be a breeding ground for bacteria
you won't be able to get rid of, no matter how thoroughly you clean it.
Reusable water bottles, on the other hand, are made from materials that are easier to
clean completely.
So just get one of those, and do your part to keep our planet green.
"God bless you, recyclops. And your cold, robot heart.”
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