Earth Day was nearly two weeks ago, but we still need to be thinking about ways to tread more lightly on our planet.
I’ll be blunt: bottled water is one of the worst ecological problems in America. I don’t know how much other countries have jumped on the bottled water bandwagon, but it’s everywhere here, and it’s a tragedy.
Why is bottled water so bad?
1. Bottled water individually wraps the most abundant substance on earth in petroleum-based, single-use packaging.
Can you imagine if the air we breathed came in single-use plastic bags? Open a bag, breathe in, breathe out, throw the bag away, repeat. Would we ever even consider this? Of course not. Oxygen tanks are nearly always refillable; it would be completely unsustainable for most of the population to get their air in disposable containers.
The same is true for water. Plastics are derived from petroleum, of which there is a limited amount left (and we all know the problems with oil).
Of more immediate concern, it takes energy to produce each bottle - even those made from completely recyclable and renewable materials. I recently saw a water bottle made from corn, which can be composted completely in 80 days (video). That’s great, and better than using oil-based plastic, but it still misses the point: making things takes energy, and the solution is to make fewer things. Producing energy leads to pollution, so reducing our energy usage should be a goal of our consumer choices.
2. Bottled water travels in trucks, not pipes.
Guess which produces less pollution - a 16″ pipe or a 36′ truck? Once it’s installed, a water main has zero carbon footprint. If all of your water is bottled elsewhere and brought to you or your grocery store in trucks, it has an enormous and unnecessary carbon footprint. Water is one of the heavier substances we consume, and thus one of the least efficient to transport by truck, given that it can easily be obtained from a faucet.
The coolest bottled water purports to be from some exotic mountain spring, whether it’s in France or the Rockies. As the local food movement has pointed out, though, the farther your meals travel, the more pollution they cause. Eating local should include drinking local water. There is simply no reason to have a truck full of water drive all the way from Colorado to Seattle, just so I can have water from a place with a cool name. It’s still just water.
3. Bottled water is a ripoff
Unless you buy it in gallon jugs, bottled water is more expensive than gasoline. Are we crazy? Water is the most abundant substance on earth. You can easily filter tap water using a Brita pitcher, a faucet-mounted filter, or a fridge filter, and get water as good as any you can buy in a bottle. It’s a ripoff both economically and environmentally, because there is no useful difference between water you filter yourself and water you buy in a bottle.
So I’m not saying not to drink good water; I’m saying to get it locally, and to let it flow to you through existing pipes rather than travel on a truck or in your car.
Take Action
To make a painless change in this area, you will probably need two things:
1. A water filter - $40 should do it. It’ll pay for itself in no time. Get one for work, too.
2. A reusable water bottle, such as a Nalgene. This will pay for itself quickly, too.
Edit: Commenters indie and Lindsay point out that not everyone can get drinkable water by filtering tap water. If that’s your situation, I recommend what Lindsay suggests - using those water kiosks at the grocery store with refillable jugs. This water is generally filtered tap water, but the filtration systems are more elaborate and thorough than you could have at home for a reasonable price. Assuming you don’t make a separate trip just for water, and shop fairly close to home, the carbon footprint of this type of “bottled” water is negligible.
If you don’t want fluoride in your water for health reasons, you can buy a countertop fluoride filter for under $200. It’s a lot of money up front, but it will save you a fortune over bottled water in the long run.
A few reasons that people might choose bottled water that aren’t touched upon here:
*Floride has been implicated in several health problems including bone cancer. Some people react to it and cannot drink it. And yet most municipalities are still adding flouride to water. Many are adding much more flouride than they should. There are limits to how much flouride can be added to bottled water, but not municipal water. Also, reverse osmosis, a filtering method that many water bottling companies use, removes most flouride. Home reverse osmosis systems can be expensive, much more expensive than Brita pitchers and the like which do not remove unwanted fluoride.
*The American Academy of Pediatrics is now advising parents not to use water with added fluoride for mixing infant formula.
*Some people don’t have safe tap water even after filtering.
*Many people use refillable containers but also keep bottled water on hand for those times when they run out and filtered water is not accessible. It is important that filtered water be on hand for some some people. For example, pregnant women who drink unfiltered tap water are more likely to miscarry.
I don’t understand designer waters and I think that we should try to limit our use, but to say that there is no excuse is overstating things. Also, I would suggest getting a Kleen Kanteen or Thermos instead of a Nalgene bottle because Nalgene bottles leach plastic into the water after they have been washed a few times.
I’ve lived in and visited a couple of places (both in the US and out) where it was inadvisable to drink the tap water, even filtered. We generally would just fill a reusable jug at the grocery store or at commercial water kiosks. It’s still higher environmental impact than just using the tap, but less so then buying individual bottles, or buying water by the gallon. Cheaper, too.
Good points, all of them. I certainly wouldn’t want to guilt people out of doing what they have to do to get clean water given their exceptional circumstances.
For most people, though, bottled water is completely unnecessary. It’s just an excuse not to plan ahead. If we had to pay eight dollars a gallon for gas, we’d throw a fit, but we gladly cough up that much for filtered water just because we don’t have a reusable bottle and a filter at hand.
Like the light bulb issue, investment is key. It’s hard to cough up $60 for a filter and a Nalgene, but it pays off quickly compared to buying a single-use bottle each day.
Lindsay, I’m glad you mentioned refillable store bottles - these are a great way to get clean water if you can’t filter your home water.
As the daughter of a (Canadian) water worker, I can tell you, these guys are highly trained and work really hard to provide potable water for their municipalities!
Aside from environmental concerns, there are also financial ones! We pay taxes for drinking water, and we should take advantage of that! And for those people who are afraid of fluoride in their water, firstly, I would advise you to check your own municipality and not take news media’s averages as truth. Secondly, once you’ve found out the conten of your own region’s water supply, as taxpayers you have a right to petition your municipality for fewer chemicals in water.
Say no to bottled water!
[...] told you so. Fast Company tackles America’s illicit affair with bottled water: Bottled water is the [...]
Excellent article and comments. I wonder when the public will catch on; but when it comes to convenience it will take something major to reduce the small water bottle manufacturing. Big business is making a fortune with this and won’t easily give up.
As usual it’s the government that needs to do something. However, I hate holding my breath. Personally, I use a filtered 7 litre water cooler jug that is supplied with water though my own taps which fill up my resuable 22 ounce portable drinking bottles. People have no idea how much money this saves.
Enough ranting from me… next!
What is the carbon footprint for a water treatment plant and all the related infrastructure? Since they are government or quasi-government agencies, are they exempt from carbon footprints?
Consider the sheer size of the plants, construction, energy use, the number of people, the transportation carbon footprint of all the workers, printing and mailing the bills, consumable chemicals, pipeline infrastructure, the installation of this infrastructure, the manufacturing process of creating all the building materials, foundries that cast the ductile iron pipe or make the plastic pipe, the vehicles and related fuel usage, that maintain all this infrastructure and you say that a water main has a zero carbon footprint? Hardly.
So what is the carbon footprint of a gallon of water delivered via a waterline? That is an excellent question and a reason to conserve water regardless of how it is delivered.
Hi Mark,
Interesting question, but it might be helpful to ask what the incremental carbon footprint of a gallon of water is. Most of the energy and material costs you mentioned are flat-rate costs - it takes the same amount of paper to print my water bill whether I use a thousand gallons or two thousand, and pipes need to be replaced periodically whether I use a little extra water or not.