Off the Bottle?

From Business Week magazine, April 14, 2008, page 47:

Many people drink bottled water because they deem it superior to the stuff that comes out of the faucet. Wrong, argues Food & Water Watch, a Washington (D. C.)-based non profit dedicated to consumer rights. In a report last year, the group blasted bottled water, declaring that Americans "think it is somehow safer or better than tap water ... but it is generally no cleaner, or safer, or healthier than tap water. In fact, the federal government requires far more rigorous and frequent safety testing and monitoring of municipal drinking water."
Americans drank 31.2 billion liters of bottled water last year. And the Pacific Institute, an Oakland (Calif.)-based sustainability thinktank, estimates that it takes approximately 17 million barrels of oil to produce the bottles all that water comes in. That, says the institute, is enough to fuel more than 1 million cars and light trucks for a year.

Water bottles

According to the October issue of Fast Company magazine (page 155:

Last year, Americans threw away 38 billion plastic water bottles, about $1 billion worth of plastic.(1) That's a huge waste, especially considering 1.5 million barrels of oil -- enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year -- were used to produce the bottles.(2) And that's not even including the oil used for transportation.

(1) Fishman, Charles: "Message in a Bottle?" Fast Company, July 2007.
(2) Arnold, Emily; Larsen, Janet: "Bottled Water: Pouring Resources Down the Drain," Earth Policy Institute, February 2, 2006: earth-policy.org/Updates/2006/Update51.htm

San Franciscans and water

San Francisco is full of funny people, but I doubt if that catches you by surprise. They want to be so eco-friendly. They try hard, they really do. Until it comes to water, that is.

Just like most of the rest of the US, they're all caught up in the bottled water craze. During my week there, I was served water called Calistoga (or something like that). My mind immediately began to picture semi trucks coming down out of the mountains of California loaded with bottles of this stuff. As if water weren't heavy enough, they bottle it in glass. So you can imagine the diesel fumes that are spewed every day just to cart water into San Francisco.

Another day, I was served Fiji water. Yes, it's actually from Fiji. It's bottled at the source from an ancient aquifer. The source is sealed, and the water is never exposed to the atmosphere until you open the cap of the bottle you bought. And it's good water, I'll admit. But then I think about shipload after shipload of it being transported to the US from Fiji. And then I think about truckload after truckload of it going all over the US. (You can even buy Fiji water in Wamego!) And then I think about the tons of fuel being burned to move ... water. So when you do open it, the first atmosphere it's exposed to is full of diesel fumes!

The most amazing part of it all is that I found the San Francisco tap water (at least in my hotel room and at the drinking fountains I used) to have excellent flavor.

In the interest of fairness, I must admit to the occasional purchase of a bottle of water. Sometimes for convenience, but mostly it's because I don't like the taste of Manhattan water. So I buy a case of Wal-Mart's best about once a year. Then I use the bottles to carry water from my house to my office, using a handy canvas totebag. After a year or so, the bottles begin to show too much wear, so they get tossed and I buy another case.