by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Even though people in the US and Britain, and other places in Europe, have access to clean water from their taps, they drink an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year (in the US). Over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 86 percent of which will never be recycled.
But, and people always think that I, and others, are on about the bottles that are not bein g recycled and being plastic and having BPA in them, and then some clever one will always try to tell me that there are biodegradable bottles now. Fine, but the bottles are not my primary concern.
The primary concern is that fact that all that bottled water depletes the resource of water in our own countries and around the globe. Please note, if you have not noticed already, that there is now bottled water shipped all the way from Fiji to the US and the UK.
In the last 10 years, per-capita consumption of bottled water in the U.S. has doubled and Americans now drink an average of 200 bottles per person per year, and while I have no figures available at present for the UK and other European countries, I would say that Britain probably just lags behind a little bit and about 100-150 bottles per person are the norm.
So, while millions of people across the world don't have access to clean water at all, Americans and Europeans, the overwhelming majority of which, have safe and cheap tap water flowing freely, still are choosing to shell out tons of money for bottled water. And the industry is making a killing off of it. It does not make sense.
What most people do not seem to realize is that a great many of those brands of bottles water, that cost at least around $1 to $1.50 a bottle, contain nothing more than filtered or reverse-osmosis treated, if lucky, tap water. Both Pepsi-Cola's Aquafina and Coke's Dasani are nothing but tap water, basically, and Pepsi, unlike Coca Cola, have actually admitted and now state that the water is from public sources.
Aside from the rip off this bottling of water from public water sources also puts a great strain on the municipal and otherwise public water net and in fact we, the public, who, through our water rates pay for the public water infrastructure pay twice, and often thrice, if we buy bottled water. Make mine Tap! Thank You!
As I have said already, what many consumers don't know is that at least a third of bottled water in the USA is actually from the same source as tap water. In some other countries it is as much as half.
Companies like PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Nestle, the big three water bottlers, are actually sucking municipal water systems for the product they bottle and sell back to us for hundreds and even thousands of times the cost. Additionally, Nestle has been mining groundwater in rural communities – many of which are concerned about their springs and streams going dry because of bottling operations.
The latter is also true as to bottled water from other companies where ground and spring water is being “mined” for the bottling process and causes water shortages.
Water is becoming more and more in short supply because we are using an d abusing in at an enormous rate, in our homes and our businesses and because the amount of water that goes back into the water courses and from there back into the seas, whether from flushing our toilets, from industry or whatever, the original water cycle no longer works. More water stays in the seas and less comes back to us in the form of rain and thus bringing us droughts even in countries such as Britain.
We must take a very close and serious look at how we use water and that includes also our use of bottled water.
What is a very sad thing is to see how many bottles are thrown away daily that have only had a few sips taken out of then and have then been chucked into the litter bins. At times we see two liter bottles having gone that self-same route with, maybe, a cup of water having been drunk.
It is time to get the public drinking fountains back where then people can fill up their own water bottles, of whatever material, for use and for free. Alternatively a small charge for filling a bottle could be made, say ten pence, which would then go to charities working to provide safe water facilities for the Third World.
A quick recap to conclude: It is not so much about the plastic bottle, whether compostable (in a composting facility, for they don't do at home), that are the problem but the very fact that we put water in bottles in the first place and the extraction of the water, the mining of groundwater.
Water is the next oil and a substance that wars will be fought over and in some places wars are being fought over it already and in some places such wars have always been on the agenda. However, if we do not think and act positively now it will become worse.
© 2010
