June 11, 2008
Opinion
Few things are as they seem
By Pete Abler
It's almost impossible to miss noticing the massive consumption of bottled water. I hardly ever drink bottled water myself, but my wife seems to always have a least two bottles within arm's reach.
Personally, it drives me nuts every two weeks when I'm getting the recycling together and have to squash all those small water bottles along with a few plastic milk bottles, an occasional detergent bottle, and a few other plastic bottles. Even though I'm not a huge consumer, many other folks are drinking a lot of bottled water. Sales have quadrupled in the last 20 years, and rose almost 8 percent last year alone. According to Tom Lauria, vice president of communications for the International Bottled Water Association, in 1990, 2.2 billion gallons of bottled water were sold worldwide.
In 2007, it was 8.8 billion. In just the last year, wholesale dollar sales for bottled water grew 7.8 percent, to $11.7 billion in 2007, according to the bottled water trade group.
The problem isn't just the water; it's the use of resources from cradle to grave for each bottle of water. For instance, if you buy a bottle of Fiji Water, Cornell University professor and environmentalist Doug James observed the irony of bottled water is that it's marketed as clean and healthy when its production contributes to unnecessary environmental degradation.
For example, "A one-liter bottle is taken out of the aquifer of this little island, and shipped all the way across the world, producing like half a pound of greenhouse gases so you can have this one liter bottle of water."
The shipping for Fiji Water or Perrier may be the extreme examples, but just envision how much it costs to ship all the bottled water produced in the United States from the source to the consumer. That's lots of fuel being wasted.
And it's not just the cost of shipping. According to a resolution passed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 2007, plastic water bottles produced for U.S. consumption take 1.5 million barrels of oil per year and that much energy could power 250,000 homes or fuel 100,000 cars for a year.
And then there's the issue of waste. In roughly the last 10 years, the amount of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles being recycled increased from about 775 million pounds in 1995 to about 1,170 million in 2005, according to the Container Recycling Institute.
During the same time period, the amount of PET bottles going into landfills jumped from 1,175 million to 3,900 million pounds, although water bottles alone are probably one of the lesser problems, making up just one-third of one percent of the total waste stream.
My mother grew up during the Depression and when it came to buying things, she was pretty frugal. It was almost impossible to get her to buy something that she didn't see as a necessity; and second, she had to be convinced of the value before she'd part with her money. With the cost of a bottle of water at a convenience store running around $1.39, she'd have to be pretty thirsty before she'd fork that over - especially when tap water costs about $0.00002 per ounce.
I'm not saying that some tap water isn't very palatable. When I lived in St. Paul and when I've visited there over the years, the water wasn't the best, although it has improved markedly over the last several years.
But when it comes to bottled water - don't think you're getting spring water or something magical. Although the producers want you to have visions of clear mountain streams and water chock full of minerals, it's more likely to be close to what comes out of your tap at home.
At 1,000 to 4,000 times the cost, the convenience of bottled water may not justify the total costs to produce, bottle, transport, and then recycle/dispose of the waste. But the real lesson here does not concern water. If you look closely at the ethanol equation, or the real cost of producing and then disposing of all the components of hybrid automobiles, or even the assumed benefits of compact fluorescents that may in fact present a far greater hazardous material cost than currently known - nothing is as it seems.
In bottled water, as in so many other things, if you never ask questions, you'll remain blissfully ignorant of the real facts surrounding an issue. If you blindly accept what anyone tells you, you'll be setting yourself up to make bad choices or bad decisions. And bad choices in bottled water or elections may both cost far more than you realize.
Well, that's what's been on my mind.
http://www.pineandlakes.com/stories/061108/opinion_20080611027.shtml
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