Don’t Bottle It
Recent political and press campaigns aim to get the nation to turn their back on bottled water and embrace the tap, at a time when water is very much on the international agenda.
Apparently, in Britain we drink 200 times more bottled water than we did in the 1970’s, helping to create a market that is worth almost £2 billion. But as people’s awareness of carbon footprints and energy waste grows, amplified by the burgeoning media coverage given to such green issues, what exactly are the facts behind this most 21st Century of industries?
The Bottled Water Information Office identifies three types of water that can be bottled:
Natural mineral water originates from an underground water table or deposit, which is bottled at source and has a ‘stable composition’ i.e. nothing is added to it.
Spring water is much the same as above, except it doesn’t have to demonstrate a stable condition.
Bottled drinking water, sometimes called table water, is the name given to water that comes from more than one source and can include municipal sources – so quite possibly the reservoirs from which your tap water also comes.
If the last one causes you to wonder why anyone would pay for something the industry itself calls bottled drinking water, you could ask Pepsi or Coca Cola. Last year these soft drinks companies’ caused an outcry when it was revealed that their water brands, Aquafina and Dasani respectively, were just purified water sourced from public reservoirs. In other words, they were selling tap water in bottles. The UK public reaction to this did have an affect: Coke’s Dasani is no longer available in the UK.
So the soft drinks companies might have been ousted but the fact remains that every year we fuel this billion-pound industry by buying bottles of something that is readily available from our own taps.
Whilst some may argue that personal spend is a private matter, most bottled water comes in plastic bottles, the production of which has untold effects on our environment. While one litre of Thames Water had a carbon dioxide equivalent of 0.3g, a litre of Volvic bottled water had a carbon footprint of 185g*, which is 600 times that of tap water. Plastic production has more than doubled since the beginning of this century* yet only one in four plastic bottles from our homes are used again* while more than two thirds end up in landfill sites.
So why drink bottled water, particularly when we are fortunate enough to live in a country that provides a safe, clean water supply? Our tap water undergoes more than 3 million quality tests* a year to ensure it is safe to drink, and while bottled water may be chilled and purified, in taste tests, many people can’t tell the difference between tap and bottled water. The Consumer Council for Water is doing its best to dispel some of the myths around tap water and offers this advice to drinkers: “The most common reason people think tap water doesn’t taste nice is because it is normally drunk at room temperature whereas bottled water is often chilled… keep a jug of water in the fridge – the chlorine will evaporate and it will taste better.”
Convenience is another factor many bottled water drinkers cite as a benefit of bottled water. Certainly carrying a bottle of water with you is a must for many travellers. When we’re abroad, we are often advised not to drink the local water and often the only alternative is to buy bottles. But again the disposal of these bottles has significant environmental affects and as the UK’s environment Minister Phil Woolas has highlighted, the amount we are spending on bottled water is fast becoming “morally unacceptable” when many countries across the world do not have access to clean, safe water of their own.
For more information:
www.ccwater.org.uk
www.wrap.org.uk
www.wateraid.org
* Source quoted on Panorama programme - Danone
* Plastic Manufacturing Association
* Waste & Resources Action Programme
* Consumer Council for Water
