Water Bottles
by Chris Tilley
Image ‘Bottles in a Landfill’ Source North Carolina Aquariums
9. Bring Your Own Bottle
Some plastic bottles may be recyclable, and some disposable coffee cups may be biodegradable, but either way there’s a significant amount of material and energy that goes into the millions of cups and bottles we use each year. If we each have just one stainless water bottle and one high quality mug, it will keep us from using thousands of one-use wonders to quench our thirst.
In 2005 there were 29.8 Billion one gallon and under bottles of water sold in the US.(source) That is up from 3.8 Billion in 1997. That 29.8 Billion is almost 100 bottles per person in the US. Only about 14.5% are recycled. This number is 2 -3 higher in states that have a deposit on these bottles. The Container Recycling Institute has a counter of how many cans and bottles that were landfilled, littered or incinerated. At the time of writing this article it was at 88,977,343,399 so far this year. Go and check out what it is at now.
The production of the bottles in 2006 took 17 million barrels of oil and was responsible for the release of 2.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. That works out to an average of about 0.15 lbs of carbon dioxide per bottle. The transportation also has a carbon dioxide price tag. Where does your bottled water come from? One company, search for ‘most expensive bottled water’ to find out who, markets their water as a status symbol. It’s bottled in Tennessee and marketed in Hollywood. Using the calculation from the article on local food, a 6 pack of these bottles, 3 litres, would have a carbon price tag of ½ lbs if shipped by truck or 0.1 lbs if shipped by rail.
Is bottled water more pure than tap water? This is largely marketing, the reality is that between 25% and 40% are bottled tap water.(source) They also had a couple of their favorite labels, scary marketing:
“Spring Water” (with a picture of a lake surrounded by mountains on the label) — Was actually from an industrial parking lot next to a hazardous waste site.
Is bottled water safer? The regulations vary from none, there are some gapping holes in the regulations, to the same as tap water.(source)
Does Bottled water taste better? “Think Outside the Bottle’ is an organization that runs ‘Tap Water Challenges’ where they do blind tastes of bottled water and local tap water. They have great success in converting bottled water users back to tap water.(source)
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Comment by katrina and olivia — Thursday, September 18, 2008 @ 8:08 am