Low Impact

Well the dollar cost is pretty straightforward, but it turns out there’s a few environmental costs too…and given that the world consumes 150 billion litres of bottled water each year, those costs add up!

So what are the costs? The most obvious one is packaging - 150 billion litres of water is a lot of plastic bottles. Only a small proportion of those bottles get recycled, and recycling has its own costs too - far better not to make the bottle in the first place!

Another one that people can forget is the transportation cost. Even in the best scenario, your humble bottle of plastic water is likely to have been trucked hundreds of kilometres. And in some case, it may well have come thousands of kilometres from another country. That travelling doesn’t come for free - fossil fuels are needed to do the work of transporting all that water. And with that comes all the associated issues like CO2 emissions, atmosphere pollution, and the consumption of a non-renewable resource.

So why do so many people swear by their bottled water over tap water? This Scientific American article is pretty informative:

• The taste? Turns out in blind taste tests, New York tap water was preferred by 45% of people, as opposed to Evian, preferred by 12% of people.

• The health issues? In the US, tap water has to be tested 100 times a month. Bottled water gets tested once a week.

• The cost? At best, bottled water costs 150 times as much as tap water. And it can be as much as 7,500 times as much!

Of course, there can be good reasons to look to bottled water, but often there are alternatives.

In some cities in Australia (Adelaide, in particular!), the tap water is famous for having a bad taste, so bottled water is an especially attractive option. But perhaps a simple water filter will do the trick? And why not go all the way and pair that water filter up with your own rainwater tank?

When you’re out shopping, water is a far healthier option than some sugary soft drink. But with a bit of planning-ahead, you can bring your own water in a water bottle - a re-usable plastic water bottle costs around the same as a throw-away bottle of water!

None of this is to say that you should never buy bottled water. Just think about the associated impacts, and the alternatives, as well.

Categories: environment, green, reduce, water