Why Bottled Water Is Not The Solution
Peter Gleick knows more about water than most people around the world. In his most recent book, he outlined the problems with bottled water and why it’s popularity is such a problem. In fact, it’s become an unsustainable business in the United States.
He says that twenty five years ago, each American drank roughly 1 gallon of bottled water in a year. Now, that number has risen to 30 gallons a year. Today, every second of the day, 1,000 bottles of water are consumed in the U.S. alone. The amounts of fuel involved in the production of the bottles, to run the plants, and to power the delivery vehicles is incredibly high. Rough calculations show that it requires between 17 and 18 million barrels of oil per year to create these bottles of water.
Recycling is another big issue. Even cities with the best recycling programs around still find their landfills brimming with empty water bottles. They harm the environment and represent money being tossed in the garbage. All the fuel costs that went into their production will never be offset by recycling them and creating something else, or even just more water bottles.
Gleick also points out that ground water depletion is another big issue. He cites one company whose water source is a desert spring in a remote canyon outside of Palm Springs. The more water the company removes from there, the less there is available for the plant and animal life in the desert area, an already dry place to be.
With worldwide bottled water consumption at around 40 billion gallons a year, it seems that the real solution is being overlooked. There are many people who do not have safe water to drink. An emphasis needs to be placed on advanced filtration systems and wells so that these people can have a reliable water source and water that can be obtained inexpensively.
Here at home, we need to emphasize that our tap water system is actually quite good, but that there is room and a need for improvement. The Safe Water Act is outdated and our systems do need to be upgraded. However, as Gleick points out, all of these upgrades can be done at a cost far lower than that of producing more and more bottled water, especially since 45 percent of bottled water is filtered municipal water anyway.
After reading this article, I thought about how much less bottled water I’ve been drinking since I bought myself a Brita filter and started drinking filtered tap water. how nice would it be if I didn’t even need the Brita and my confidence in straight tap water was restored? With such a basic necessity like water, we really need to concentrate our resources on making the overall system better for everyone and shift our focus away from company products which have seemingly stolen our public water supply away from us through marketing campaigns and ubiquitous availability.
To read the original article, please go to http://www.fastcompany.com/node/1678595/print