What Is The Real Cost Of Bottled Water?

4 years ago Environment

the real cost of bottled waterPhoto:

Image from tskdesign

As John McCain and Hillary Clinton tell Americans tales of a gas tax holiday to relieve us of a whole 20 cents per gallon this summer (we're paying more than four dollars anyway) it's probably worth discussing one of the other reasons that gas is so darn expensive…

Of course, the reason is demand. Although developing countries such as China and India take the blame, there are other forces at work. Bottled water for example, which despite being past its peak, consumes roughly 17 million barrels of oil every year, not including transportation. The worst part of it is that that's not even half the problem.

In addition to the 17 million barrels of oil (equivalent to just under the GDP of the Cayman Islands at today's prices) used in production, bottled water consumes gallons and gallons of water.

Three gallons of the wet stuff is required to produce one gallon of what you will happily pay a dollar for, largely because of the length and complexity of the various "purification" processes and the evaporation loss that takes place while the water is in the plant. This is quite an ugly statistic, when juxtaposed to the fact that less than one percent of the water on our planet is both accessible and potable.

Besides the extravagant amount of oil used to make the bottles and large volumes of water used in the bottling process, there are of course, several other considerations. Firstly, there are the transport costs - by the time you transport every bottle by rail or truck and keep it cool, you may as well have filled it one-fourth of the way with oil. Let’s also not forget the operating costs of the factories themselves and the profit the bottled water companies have to make for their shareholders.Therefore, purely from an economic standpoint, if you only drink bottled water, you’re a mug.

Beyond that, there is also an environmental impact from production. This in fact, is quite simple to calculate: every ton of PET plastic for the bottles produces 3 tons of carbon--adding 2.5 Million tons of carbon dioxide emissions to the 17 million barrels of oil.

Info from the Pacific Institute

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Comments

Old Comments

Corey says

Nov 25th, 2008 at 12am
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Dubs says

Nov 8th, 2008 at 12am
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=40918954313 I posted a link to this website on my facebook group, so i thought i might post a link for my facebook group on here. It's called "Support local business, consumer power!" and supports small business and believes that we have to help the small guys out to stop the BIG guys taking over. Please join if you want and contribute if you have some good things to say. Thanks

Olga says

Nov 1st, 2008 at 12am
I feel guilty drinking bottled water.

Phillip Shoemaker says

May 20th, 2008 at 12am
Wow, great discussion, and some ridiculous theories. But, putting those aside, we should all agree that the convenience that our country in particular thrives upon, is killing this world. Fast food restaurants and single serving containers makes for far too many things to be thrown away, recycled, etc. If you buy in bulk and store the products in reusable containers, you greatly reduce the amount of waste your household 'makes'. Water is the same thing. If you don't have potable water from your faucets, do the right thing: get reusable jugs from a water store, and get those refilled. When you run out of the house, don't grab a puny, disposable water bottle. Rather, go buy yourself a SIGG bottle and refill from the large bottle. BULK is the answer to many things. Many people think that since they recycle those little bottles that they're doing the right thing. I thank you for recycling, but I won't applaud you until you start doing the right thing, and stop living off of convenience.

Tim Hickey says

May 9th, 2008 at 12am
Hi David, I agree that bottled water for Coke et. al. is equally bad. A couple things to add: your assumption that you are not getting fluoride in bottled water is mistaken. See the NRDC tests on bottled water. Lots of it has fluoride and other chemicals. Well-filtered tap water carried in a reusable bottle is not only far cheaper but you can have much purer water. Secondly, the environmental cost of created soft plastic bottles - for Coke, water, whatever - and then paying for trucks to ship it around, and burning fuel to keep it cold burns a lot of petroleum and hurts the environment. This is unsustainable, and we need to do better.

Dusani says

May 8th, 2008 at 12am
Tell me, do you know how much water and plastic Hollywood uses to produce DVDs and CD’s? In 2005, DVD’s alone produced 214,000.000 lbs of plastic. How much water? Who knows. Stop buying DVDs and CD’s and save the freaking planet.
haha ... lets tack on more zeros at the end there, it'll make it seem like a bigger number. ... There's many much bigger issues at hand than freaking bottled water, but it's not about how much we consume, it's that we consume. You can't change ppl with one quick swoop and say "you will now not buy SUV's" .. nah it takes baby steps, and not drinking bottled water is one of those small steps. It gets u to start thinking green, so that in the long run u will choose not to waste as opposed to be forced to have to not waste ... we're much more likely to change if we have a choice about it, and much more likely to make small changes than big enourmous ones like not ever driving SUVs

Prashant says

May 8th, 2008 at 12am
Why should India and China take the blame for rising oil prices?

BSC says

May 8th, 2008 at 12am
The vast vast majority of municipal water is perfect for drinking. We have terrific water in our city yet everyone in my former office chose bottled water for convenience alone. It's shameful.

Sol says

May 7th, 2008 at 12am
I like bottled water and will continue to drink it!
Have you considered purifying your own tap water? And if it makes you feel more sophisticated, after purifying it from the faucet, bottle it yourself! Just make sure to reuse the same bottle many times over, please.

Gene says

May 6th, 2008 at 12am
I have a Everpure H-1200 filtration system and it works great. It will filter 1000 gallons and replacement cartridges are only $180 for both. Compare that with drinking bottled water every day and it comes out pretty cheap and better for the environment.