I subscribe to Ethical Ocean and below are some factoids about bottled water and why you should stop buying it. That said, I work for a large corporation that purchases case upon case of bottled water. Our kitchens are well stocked in bottled water, juice, and soda. I wish I could convince my employer to stop buying bottled water, but I am almost certain, I would be met with hositility and resistance. Either that or my plea would only fall on deaf ears. In any event… read on and please spread the word.
BTW, I am old enough to remember a time when Bottled Water didn’t exist!
From: Ethical Ocean:
I think we all have an idea that bottled water may not be the best for the planet. All those extra plastic bottles rarely make it to the recycling depot (in fact, 75% end up in the trash), and it takes a lot of energy to produce, process and ship bottled water. How much exactly? 7.6 MJ per 1L bottle produced: 4MJ to produce the bottle, and an average of 3.6MJ to ship it and refrigerate it.
Ok mister science pants, you might be thinking, 7.6 MJ is a pretty abstract number…What does that actually mean? Here it is in more tangible measure:
- 667 mL of crushed coal per 1L bottle (i.e 2/3 full) for production
- 250 mL diesel fuel per 1L bottle (i.e. 1/4 full) for shipping and refrigeration
- 3L of water per 1L bottle (including the litre you drink)
Quite a lot isn’t it? Still not convinced that this is wasteful? Consider this: keeping in mind the 7.6MJ from before, tap water by comparison uses about 0.005MJ per litre. That means that bottled water uses about 1500x as much energy as tap water – and here’s the kicker… 50% of bottled water is actually just tap water, including Coke’s Dasani and Pepsi’s Aquafina.
Yep, they are taking tap water which you essentially get for free, packaging it up in a package which uses 1500 times the energy and will likely be thrown away in the end, and then charging you a huge premium for the same free water you get in your home. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?
Want to learn more?
We’ve put together a great video summarizing this information, check it out and pass it on to others: http://www.ethicalocean.com/water-bottled-no-plastic-go-stainless
For those interested in where these numbers came from, check out our calculations here: http://www.ethicalocean.com/sites/ethicalocean.com/files/bottled-water-inputs.pdf
And finally, our wildly popular blog post written by one of our founders, Lena Lam: http://www.ethicalocean.com/blog/bottled-water-vs-tap-water/
Thank you for joining the conversation!
-The Ethical Ocean Team
Girl for Animal Liberation 