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The Trouble with Bottled Water

Elizabeth Royte reflects on the backlash against commercializing a natural resource and responds to reader comments

  • By Elizabeth Royte
  • Smithsonian.com, April 14, 2008

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    In the spring of 2007, the quietly simmering backlash against bottled water began to boil. Responding to well-organized pressure groups, first one, and then a dozen cities across the nation canceled their contracts for bottled-water delivery. Upscale restaurants struck fancy waters from their menus, and college students conducted taste tests intended to prove, once and for all, that most people can't tell the difference between bottled water and tap.

    Suddenly bottled water was big news. Every time I opened a newspaper, magazine or Web browser, there was another story announcing that this harmless indulgence is anything but. On the lookout for this sort of material, I nearly drowned in the tidal wave of eco-criticism. With a mounting sense of anticipation—how far will the attacks go?—I watched as reporters, using statistics from academics and environmental groups, blasted away at the bottled-water industry. But curiously, their focus wasn't water, at first. It was oil.

    Specifically, the 17 million barrels it takes each year to make water bottles for the U.S. market. (Plastic-making also generates emissions of nickel, ethylbenzene, ethylene oxide, and benzene, but because we're in the thick of the global-warming movement, not the environmental-carcinogen movement, this doesn't get much play.) That's enough oil to fuel 1.3 million cars for a year.

    Is 17 million barrels a lot? Yes and no. Total U.S. oil consumption is 20 million barrels a day. But the oil that goes into water bottles themselves doesn't include the energy needed to fill them or to move them to consumers. Every week, a billion bottles snake through the country on tens of thousands of trucks, trains and ships. (In 2007, Poland Spring alone burned 928,226 gallons of diesel fuel.) And then there's the energy it takes to chill water in fridges and to haul the empties off to landfills. It adds up.

    Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, estimates that the total energy required for every bottle's production, transport and disposal is equivalent, on average, to filling that bottle a quarter of the way with oil. His finding, undisputed by the water-bottling industry, shocks me. Oil, as we know, is a nonrenewable resource, mostly imported. The hunt for more oil is politically dangerous and expensive, and can be environmentally ruinous.

    And then there's the water itself—increasingly important as we enter what's been called the post-Peak Water era. Manufacturing and filling plastic water bottles consumes twice as much water as the bottle will ultimately contain, in part because bottle-making machines are cooled by water. Plants that use reverse osmosis to purify tap water lose between three and nine gallons of water—depending on how new the filters are and what they remove—for every filtered gallon that ends up on the shelf. Cleaning a bottling plant also requires a great deal of municipal water, especially if the end product is flavored. On average, only 60 to 70 percent of the water used by bottling plants ends up on supermarket shelves: the rest is waste.

    These costs—water, energy, oil—aren't unique to bottled water. It takes 48 gallons of water to make a gallon of beer, four gallons of water to make one of soda. Even a cow has a water footprint, drinking four gallons of water to produce one gallon of milk. But those other beverages aren't redundant to the calorie-free (and caffeine- and coloring-free) liquid that comes out of the tap, and that's an important distinction.

    As 2007 wound down, bottled water sales slowed a bit, but it's hard to say if it was due to activist pressure, cool weather, high prices (oil costs more) or, as Nestlé Waters North America CEO Kim Jeffery says, a lack of natural disasters, which always spur demand. In any event, billions of cases of water continued to march out of supermarkets, and millions of bottles dribbled from everyplace else.

    In the spring of 2007, the quietly simmering backlash against bottled water began to boil. Responding to well-organized pressure groups, first one, and then a dozen cities across the nation canceled their contracts for bottled-water delivery. Upscale restaurants struck fancy waters from their menus, and college students conducted taste tests intended to prove, once and for all, that most people can't tell the difference between bottled water and tap.

    Suddenly bottled water was big news. Every time I opened a newspaper, magazine or Web browser, there was another story announcing that this harmless indulgence is anything but. On the lookout for this sort of material, I nearly drowned in the tidal wave of eco-criticism. With a mounting sense of anticipation—how far will the attacks go?—I watched as reporters, using statistics from academics and environmental groups, blasted away at the bottled-water industry. But curiously, their focus wasn't water, at first. It was oil.

    Specifically, the 17 million barrels it takes each year to make water bottles for the U.S. market. (Plastic-making also generates emissions of nickel, ethylbenzene, ethylene oxide, and benzene, but because we're in the thick of the global-warming movement, not the environmental-carcinogen movement, this doesn't get much play.) That's enough oil to fuel 1.3 million cars for a year.

    Is 17 million barrels a lot? Yes and no. Total U.S. oil consumption is 20 million barrels a day. But the oil that goes into water bottles themselves doesn't include the energy needed to fill them or to move them to consumers. Every week, a billion bottles snake through the country on tens of thousands of trucks, trains and ships. (In 2007, Poland Spring alone burned 928,226 gallons of diesel fuel.) And then there's the energy it takes to chill water in fridges and to haul the empties off to landfills. It adds up.

    Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, estimates that the total energy required for every bottle's production, transport and disposal is equivalent, on average, to filling that bottle a quarter of the way with oil. His finding, undisputed by the water-bottling industry, shocks me. Oil, as we know, is a nonrenewable resource, mostly imported. The hunt for more oil is politically dangerous and expensive, and can be environmentally ruinous.

    And then there's the water itself—increasingly important as we enter what's been called the post-Peak Water era. Manufacturing and filling plastic water bottles consumes twice as much water as the bottle will ultimately contain, in part because bottle-making machines are cooled by water. Plants that use reverse osmosis to purify tap water lose between three and nine gallons of water—depending on how new the filters are and what they remove—for every filtered gallon that ends up on the shelf. Cleaning a bottling plant also requires a great deal of municipal water, especially if the end product is flavored. On average, only 60 to 70 percent of the water used by bottling plants ends up on supermarket shelves: the rest is waste.

    These costs—water, energy, oil—aren't unique to bottled water. It takes 48 gallons of water to make a gallon of beer, four gallons of water to make one of soda. Even a cow has a water footprint, drinking four gallons of water to produce one gallon of milk. But those other beverages aren't redundant to the calorie-free (and caffeine- and coloring-free) liquid that comes out of the tap, and that's an important distinction.

    As 2007 wound down, bottled water sales slowed a bit, but it's hard to say if it was due to activist pressure, cool weather, high prices (oil costs more) or, as Nestlé Waters North America CEO Kim Jeffery says, a lack of natural disasters, which always spur demand. In any event, billions of cases of water continued to march out of supermarkets, and millions of bottles dribbled from everyplace else.

    "People don't go backwards," says Arthur Von Wiesenberger, author of The Pocket Guide to Bottled Water and a consultant to the beverage industry. "Once they've developed a taste for bottled water, they won't give it up." Indeed, new bottling plants opened this past year in the United States, Europe, India and Canada; and entrepreneurs announced plans to bottle water in the Amazon, among other fragile landscapes, while Nestlé—the Swiss conglomerate that owns Poland Spring, Calistoga and many other U.S. brands of spring water, not to mention the French Perrier—continues to buy and explore new spring sites.

    Overall, Americans drank 29.3 gallons of bottled water per capita in 2007, up from 27.6 gallons in 2006, with the 2007 wholesale revenue for bottled water in the U.S. exceeding $11.7 billion.

    Still, among a certain psychographic, bottled water, not so long ago a chic accessory, is now the mark of the devil, the moral equivalent of driving a Hummer. No longer socially useful, it's shunned in many restaurants, where ordering tap is all the rage. Writing in Slate, Daniel Gross calls this new snob appeal entirely predictable. "So long as only a few people were drinking Evian, Perrier, and San Pellegrino, bottled water wasn't perceived as a societal ill. Now that everybody is toting bottles of Poland Spring, Aquafina, and Dasani, it's a big problem."

    But is it fashion or is it rising awareness of the bottle's environmental toll that's driving the backlash? I'm starting to think they're the same thing. Fashion drove a certain segment of society to embrace bottled water in the first place, and fashion (green chic, that is) may drive that same segment to reject it. But the imperative to stop global warming—the biggest reason for the backlash—reaches only so far. For some, the imperative to protect oneself from tap water that either tastes bad or is bad, or the simple allure of convenience, may trump planetary concerns.

    The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA), which represents 162 bottlers in the United States, is counting on it. Now in panic mode, the group is deflecting critics left and right. Bottled water uses only 0.02 percent of the world's groundwater, Joseph Doss, the group's president, argues in advertisements and interviews. (Yes, but it takes all those gallons from just a few places.) Other beverages move around the country, and the world, too: it's unfair to single out bottled water for opprobrium. (True: only about 10 percent of bottled water, by volume, is imported in the United States, compared with 25 to 30 percent of wine. But we don't drink 28 gallons of wine per person per year, and wine doesn't, alas, flow from our taps.)

    Another industry argument is that bottled water is a healthy alternative to high-calorie drinks. The IBWA says it competes with soda, not tap water. But this appears to be a change in stance. In 2000, Robert S. Morrison, then CEO of Quaker Oats, soon to merge with PepsiCo, distributors of Aquafina, told a reporter, "The biggest enemy is tap water." And Susan D. Wellington, vice president of marketing for Gatorade, also owned by PepsiCo, said to a group of New York analysts, "When we're done, tap water will be relegated to showers and washing dishes." In 2006, Fiji Water took that dig at Cleveland, with its "The Label Says Fiji Because It's Not Bottled in Cleveland" ad.

    Since Americans still drink almost twice as much soda as bottled water, it's not surprising that Coca- Cola, owner of vitaminwater and Dasani, and PepsiCo. are covering all their bases. The companies now offer vitamin-fortified sodas, extending what Michael Pollan calls "the Wonder bread strategy of supplementation to junk food in its purest form."

    The bottling industry also plays the emergency card: consumers should consider bottled water when tap isn't an option. When the pipes break and pumps fail, of course, but also when you are, well, thirsty. "It's not so easy, walking down Third Avenue on a hot day, to get a glass of tap water," John D. Sicher Jr., editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, a trade publication, says. And, yes, all those plastic bottles, which use about 40 percent less resin now than they did five years ago, really should be recycled, the bottlers all cry. "Our vision is to no longer have our packaging viewed as waste but as a resource for future use," says Scott Vitters, Coke's director of sustainable packaging, says. At the same time, bottlers tend to oppose container-deposit laws, which are funded by the beverage industry, in favor of curbside or drop- off recycling programs, which have, so far, been funded by taxpayers.

    Are environmental activists making too much of bottled water's externalities? Surely other redundant, status-oriented consumer products—the latest iteration of an iPod, for example—are worse for the environment, and for those affected by their manufacture (though nobody buys an iPod a day). Michael Mascha, who publishes a bottled-water newsletter, is adamant on the topic: "All I want is to have a choice about what I drink. I want five or six waters to match a dining experience. Fine waters are a treat." Mascha can't help marginalizing the opposition. "The backlash is the green movement," he says, "and it's antiglobalization. They say water shouldn't be a commodity, but why should water be free? Why is it different from food, which we also need to live, or shelter?"

    The antiglobalization argument comes from pressure groups such as Food and Water Watch, which runs a "take back the tap" pledge campaign, and Corporate Accountability International (CAI). They have ideological roots in single-issue social and environmental campaigns (curbing sweatshop abuses and old-growth logging, for example). In recent years, such campaigns have converged to challenge the political power of large multinational corporations that, often by exercising free-trade agreements, are presumed to harm the environment and infringe upon human rights, local democracies and cultural diversity.

    In the United States, CAI's anti-bottled water campaign—which taps both the environmental and the antiprivatization movements—has a multi-tiered agenda. First, it wants to demonstrate that most people can't discern between bottled and tap water. Second, it informs the public that most bottled water is "just tap" (which isn't, strictly speaking, true). Volunteers also make their points about bottled water's carbon footprint and its expense compared to tap, and then they ask individuals, and local governments, to quit buying it. Depending on the city, CAI may also ask local officials to forswear selling public water to private bottlers.

    The group also pushes for water bottlers in the United States to quit undermining local control of water sources with their pumping and bottling. This last bit—opposing the privatization of a public resource—may be too outré for most mainstream news outlets to pick up on, perhaps because it raises sticky questions of ownership and control, and it offends many Americans' ideas about the primacy of capitalism. But while Corporate Accountability's mission to halt corporate control of a common resource might be abstract to most bottled-water drinkers, it isn't the least bit abstract to Californians resisting Nestlé's efforts to build a bottling plant in McCloud, near Mount Shasta, or to Floridians who swam in Crystal Springs until Nestlé began bottling it, or to those residents of Fryeburg, Maine, raging against Nestlé's boreholes and the big silver Poland Spring trucks that haul local water to markets throughout the northeast.

    The fate of a spring-fed pond in Maine might not interest the average person slapping down two bucks for a bottle of Poland Spring at a concession stand, but the issue of who controls water may in the long run be even more important than how many barrels of oil are burned to quench the nation's thirst. We can do without oil, but we can't live without water.

    Adapted from Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It. Copyright Elizabeth Royte. Published by Bloomsbury.


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    Comments

    I admit, I continue to drink bottled water. I do try to curtail purchases of those little, single serving bottles, however, by buying large gallon sizes, usually distilled water for my oxygen concentrator and for personal use. I "recycle" small bottles about 3 times before giving up and sending them off to the dump. Why? In several communities in my small state (Delaware) we have had repeated water quality problems. Yes, we get a warning as soon as testing reveals the issue, but between the test findings and the report, a day to several days may pass. I have a chronic lung problem. I don't want to subject myself to a day or two now and then of e coli in the water, so I guess I will continue looking for a better solution than the one I am using now. I am looking for a glass bottle that I can wash and re-use and carry in a small carry bag. That would be a very helpful solution. Unfortunately, all I find are metal bottles or more plastic ones.

    Posted by Joyce Mullins on April 22,2008 | 02:58PM

    Re: water / bottle use: I've bought a small fleet [six-pack?] of Nalgene pint translucent narrow neck water bottles. [The ones which presumably don't release toxic chenicals on washing.] Used repeatedly these let me carry tap water to most local events. There is little way these can compete with water needs at an outdoor event a long way from home / longer than one refill cycle. Should we wish for a certified clean tap to refill bottles in public? I would jump for the opportunity to pay a small deposit on thin plastic bottles. While carrying my reusable bottles, I often see many trash cans filled with disposable/recyclable bottles at semi-public events where the economics of paying workers to separate recyclables from trash apparently don't work. Where is the balance between advocacy and overview? BP

    Posted by Bruce Parker on April 22,2008 | 03:38PM

    I find the above article very interesting and agree with it. I find it interesting how many items in our lives come from oil in spite of the cost and how much oil the world has and the pollution from it. Far more plastic is used in building cars now. Like the plastic bumper covers. I have spoken to a number of body shop owners and haven't heard any reason for the use of bumper covers other than making a cover for the actual bumper, in spite of the fact that all cars now have them. A friend from Germany told me that plastic water bottles are illegal there for the reasons mentioned in the article. We have become a disposible society. So many computers and printers are thrown away now instead of repaired. The amount of plastic that is thrown away now in land fills is astounding. I think it's time to find a replacement for all this plastic and work to getting a cleaner planet. Sincerely, Louis Steiner

    Posted by Louis Steiner on April 22,2008 | 03:56PM

    Just remember when you got to the gas pump: Diet Snapple is $16.32/gallon Lipton Ice Tea is 9.52/gallon Ocean Spray 10.00/gallon Brake Fluid is 33.60/Gallon Pepto Bismol is 123.20 gallon White Out 25.42/gallon Scope Mouthwash is 84.88/gallon Evian Water is 21.19/ gallon Spelled backwards ( Niave Printer Ink $5,200/ Gallon The next time you are at the pump, be grateful you auto does not run on any of these. Einstein said, We can't blame the idiots that abuse the resources, blame those who stand silently by and watch it happen and do nothing. Thanks, Mary Lou Krieg

    Posted by Mary Krieg on April 22,2008 | 04:05PM

    In the United States with our health requirements in all municipalities there is absolutely no excuse for store bought water. There are plastic bottles everywhere that you can fill and re-fill at any hydrant.Restaurnts should be fined for selling bottles of water. I lived in a 3rd world country where drinking water was a necessity. So you bought water. You boiled house water and then used it. Field water was just that. Unprosessed for agriculture Americans are just flumting their ignorant wealth with their bought bottled water.

    Posted by nancy curry on April 22,2008 | 05:06PM

    What a timely msg from you. I just this week gave up purchasing bottled water - purchased a Purr water filter which fits on my kitchen faucet - and also purchased a stainless steel drinking water container at Target...it's stainless steel inside (not plastic). I did this after reading a report on the dangers of several types of plastic containers....however, in addition, I'm glad I'll be helping the environment. Keep up the good work of getting the message out to everyone. Ta.

    Posted by chris on April 22,2008 | 05:24PM

    A very long overdo article. Americans are the greatest users and wasters in the world. Ours and world resources are being used so rapidly that there is a bottom line to it all, "the well will go dry, be is water, oil or whatever." Can't happen? You're betting your life on it.

    Posted by Richard S'Chevalier on April 22,2008 | 05:53PM

    I'm 69 years old and I've fought for the environment for over 35 years, I'm the mother of 5,grand mother of 6, and foster mother of over 150. I was very politically involved for over 25 of those years. It always seemed that money was the consistant winner. I'm so glad that people are starting to listen, I hope it isn't too late. For the love of having a future for all of my children, all of your children, and the planet... I sincerely hope that someone is sincerely listening. We can't keep treating this planet like we have a spare. EARTH IS NOT DISPOSABLE, or RECYCLABLE........... LOVE IT or LEAVE IT

    Posted by Pat Becker on April 22,2008 | 05:54PM

    Response to another poster:. . . .and there are also many Americans (wealthy and otherwise) who flaunt their ignorance with irrelevant and unsupportable biased arguments that do not address the question at hand in any meaningful way. I think you will find that there are many more wealthy Europeans and Asians than there are wealthy Americans and if you make a serious study of the culture of drinking of bottled waters, you will soon realize that the American practice was influenced by and adapted from century old European practices. I for one prefer to see people flaunt their wealth than see people flaunt their ignorance and their biased naivite relative to an important public issue. The energy can be better spent with a serious effort to explore and understand the relevant factors that define an issue.

    *Elizabeth Royte responds (5/6/2008)*
    I have nothing to say regarding the relative ignorance of Americans versus others, but I’d like to add that while Europeans do consume a great deal of bottled water, they’re not the ones drinking from billions of small plastic bottles while driving, walking, talking on cell phones, waiting in lines, sitting in class or toiling at work. Europeans tend to enjoy their bottled waters—in liter-size glass bottles—sitting down, with a meal. Let’s hope they don’t adopt our strange habits.

    Posted by Ken Price on April 22,2008 | 06:45PM

    Help! Help! Help! My wife is a bottled water addict! She does not remember the benzene documented in the past in French bottled water. She fails to understand that even in Delaware US tap water is much safer that bottled water ...wherever it comes from. She ignores the environmental consequences of her destructive habit, just as cocaine addicts ignore their effect on Columbia. Momentary convenience trumps all for her. The earth is doomed.

    Posted by Thomas Duncan Nichols Ph.D., M.D. on April 22,2008 | 07:45PM

    When I first saw bottled water, I considered it a joke. Next, I thought, they'll be selling fresh air in cans. Julia Child suggested that Americans are afraid of food. It appears that they are afraid of almost everything. I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising company started to sell machines that pumped "clean, purified, arctic air" into our offices and homes!

    Posted by Jim Lacey on April 23,2008 | 05:41AM

    I have yet to figure out why people have felt they needed to drink a NEW bottle of water every time. I purchase one bottle (generally the liter size) and drink that, then re-fill it for at least a year filled with local tap water before disposing of it. Remember Evian Water is the one that really started it in the US - that does spell 'naive' backwards. We should have taken the lesson then! Do have to say I have been in areas, even in the USA, that the local water was horrible and I was quite glad to be able to obtain bottled water. So maybe there is a balance somewhere.

    *Elizabeth Royte responds (5/6/2008)*
    If you buy a reusable bottle—metal or glass won’t leach chemicals into the water—and get into the habit of filling it with tap before you leave home, you’ll generate even less waste. And yes, some few places in the States do have water that either tastes bad or is bad. If boiling won't eliminate the contaminant, “point of use” filtering may. (You can learn more about filters at National Geographic’s Green Guide)

    If your system is beyond boiling or filtering, you could at least buy the largest size container of water possible from a trusted source close to home. (The farther your water is hauled, of course, the more carbon it puts into the atmosphere).

    Posted by Marilyn Meiners on April 23,2008 | 06:02AM

    I drink bottled water but I refill the same container several times before I recycle it. I buy gallon jugs for home use and recycle those too. My water supply is floridated and it tastes terrible. I don't want to overdo the floride. I use bottled water for making coffee and ice and for pasta and rice that absorb water. But I use tap for other cooking.

    *Elizabeth Royte responds (5/6/2008)*
    Fluoride has no discernable taste in water. Do you mean chlorine? Either way, there are filters that remove both, including models made by Culligan and Doulton. Simply letting water stand in a jug overnight removes chlorine; pouring it back and forth between containers ten times does the same thing faster (and possibly counts as exercise); simple countertop pitchers, like those made by Brita or PUR, also take out chlorine.

    Posted by Joan Paquette on April 23,2008 | 08:31AM

    In parts of Central America, plastic water bottles are used to clean up community litter. Empty bottles from hotels and restaurants are provided children who then collect up litter which they stuff into the bottles and return them to community centers in return for educational materials such as pens, pencils, books and paper. The stuffed bottles (called plastic bricks) are used to build needed schools, clinics and other structures in impoverished communities. Clean water, community clean up - environmental education and needed public buildings: What's the problem? You can see a clearer explanation of uses in Guatemala at www.puravidaatitlan.org.

    Posted by Earl de Bewrge on April 23,2008 | 09:13AM

    The one thing that your article failed to mention is that tap water is better for you, especially children. Tap water contains fluoride, bottled water does not. Tap water must comply with EPA regulations, which bottled water does not.

    *Elizabeth Royte responds (5/6/2008)*
    Yes, most Americans live in communities with fluoridated water, but many do not. The American Dental Association wants us to have fluoride, unless we’re less than two years old, but it acknowledges we can get the fluoride from toothpaste, mouth rinses, and annual fluoride treatment. A few water bottlers have started adding fluoride to their offerings. The International Bottled Water Association lists some of those companies here.

    Posted by Steve Slepner on April 23,2008 | 10:57AM

    I bought bottled water in South America, southeaset Asia, and, Africa.

    Posted by Jim Brandon on April 23,2008 | 02:55PM

    Machines that pump cold clean air into our homes are readily available, are very successful commercially, and have been in daily use in the U,S, and worldwide for many years. They are called air conditioners equipped with electrostatic precipitators, mechanical filters, and activated charcoal carbon filters to absorb volatile organic compounds and possibly sulfur dioxide. If it is true that there are no differences between tap water and bottled water, would someone kindly advise me where the tap is that freely flows Pellagrino water and the famous sulfur water of Saratoga Springs and other world famous mineral waters that are bottled and sold at retail. It is my understanding that bottled water at a minimum is rendered sterile by either a heat process, a radiation process, or a ultra membrane filtration process such as reverse osmosis. I don't believe that sterilized tap water is available anywhere in this country--except possibly by a random accident of nature such as municipal supplies sources froman artesian well and distributed without coming into contact with the environment. In our area, we are frequently warned of the presence of E. coli and the potential presence of single cell parasites in our drinking water. I have never heard of a recall of bottled water for presence of live organismic material capable of growth and reproduction. Can someone provide a reference to such a recall for bottled water? One poster reports that she lived in a "3rd World" country where drinking water was a neccessity! Is not drinking water a necessity for human and animal life regardless of what country or type of country in which one lives?

    Posted by Ken on April 23,2008 | 03:28PM

    I rent my house. In the small community I live in (near the great lakes) there have been several water advisories from our municipal water treatment plant. The notices go to the landlord, who may, or may not remember to let me know. I have some health problems which make me succeptible to some of the water issues. Until municipalities do a better job with our tap water, I'll choose bottled. I WOULD like to be clearer on types of portable containers I can (re)use for said bottled water.

    *Elizabeth Royte responds (5/6/2008)*
    Deb, are the problems with your water something you could deal with by boiling? It’s a hassle, but it’s cheaper and has a far smaller carbon footprint than buying in bottles. Ask your doctor about filtering with granulated activated charcoal or a reverse osmosis unit, which you install under your sink. If you absolutely must buy bottled water, try to choose the largest size container from the closest source. The best bottles for carrying water around are glass, stainless steel (lined with food-grade enamel), and metal.

    Posted by Deb on April 24,2008 | 09:07AM

    I was born in France, a mere 5 miles away from Evian’s bottling plant. I think ferrying bottle water from France to North America or Asia is insane! Isn’t it today’s version of “bringing coal to Newcastle.” I don’t see any mention in the article of the cost of moving that ponderous commodity from Fiji, France, or Italy into the United States. In my opinion, snobbery is the driver and vain consumers of fancy bottled water brands should be flogged for keeping up the demand!

    Posted by Jean-François Lanvers on April 24,2008 | 03:56PM

    The figures on what it takes to make all those plastic bottles brought me up short. Astronomical! So going forward I will avoid those bottles......One of he earliest posts mentioned wanting a small glass bottle to fit in a purse. May I suggest, as you grocery shop, to look for something already bottled in the right size glass bottle - buy it and empty it. Or Visit your local pharmacy......lots of stuff in the drugstore come in glass. I'm sure if we boycott water bottled in plastic......someone will come along and make just the right glass bottle, just as they came out with seemingly safer plastics. It's clear all the progress we make isn't all progress. We need to discern going forward what's progress, or what's convenient, yet unhealthy and unsafe. For years pop came in returnable glass bottles with a return deposit. Many of us saved glass jars from things like mayo and applesauce to store rice and beans.....and for those not so thrifty there were the big granny jars with the rubber gasket seals to store flour and sugar in. Looks like progress needs to go in reverse.

    Posted by J. Soldwisch on April 25,2008 | 06:32PM

    Has anyone thought about how much water is taken out of our invironment, by what's left in the bottle with the lid on? I work as a custodian in a midsize high school and I take the lids off hundreds of these bottles every week. Most of them only have one swallow out of them! I worked at a landfill for 10 years, and the trash is so spongey that when a compactor runs over a bottle of water, it just sinks into the trash, it doesn't break, thus releasing the water back into our invironment! How long does it take a plastic bottle to decompose with no oxygen getting to it? I think it's safe to say that millons of gallons of water are taken out of our invironment every month? Is water going to be our next problem, it seems to be heading that way. As for the oil I think the high prices is what's going to force us to start using alternative fuels. If it stayed cheap noone would be trying as hard to push for cleaner fuels, and we would continue to destroy our planet! Think about this the next time you throw away a half full water bottle, with the cap on it!

    Posted by T Wiedmaier on April 30,2008 | 10:44PM

    I think it's great that I and others have made a commitment to reduce the number of plastic bottles that we will consume. But I wonder about other people -- where will I get the confidence to tell others about the extreme waste involved in the bottled water production?

    Posted by Gregg Punswick on May 5,2008 | 07:13AM

    since I live in Mexico I do not have the tap water option, however, it does concern me the incredible number of bottles disposed per year. Personally I boil and refill which is probably as bad for the environment. So many in this country do not have a secure water source, bottled water is their only option. Perhaps we need to look at the source, why do people think that bottled water, uncarbonated,is better than tap. Mebbe we need to go back to the returnable glass bottles... susan+

    Posted by susan dennen on May 8,2008 | 12:27PM

    Does it matter if it is bottled water or any other product with similar attributes? All products are not perfectly "green" and they all come with a cost. So why delude ourselves with the good feeling of "yes I am so green and politically correct...Look at me” when the very existence of a single consuming human impacts the surrounding environment in a negative way? With that said, I should state that I am not against the existence of mankind (oops a politically incorrect term) just doom sayers and wags that create just as many problem as they pretend to solve.

    *Elizabeth Royte responds (5/15/2008)*
    Yes, everything we do has an impact -- biking to work, recycling newspapers, and drinking tap water included. But since we depend on the (finite) natural world for all that sustains us, aren't we obliged to harm that world as little as possible? (And yes, we may each define "possible" according to our own conscience and abilities.) If your tap water is healthful, why opt for a product that's redundant and, however minor in the scheme of things, takes an unnecessary environmental toll?

    Posted by Matthew Combes on May 12,2008 | 12:13PM

    We have found that using a Reverse Osmosis system give us plenty of very clean water without using bottled water of any kind. We found the info
    www.bottledwateralternative.com.

    Posted by g kvi on November 14,2009 | 10:39AM

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