NOTE: This post is timestamped Sunday because I want it to be at the top of the page until Sunday night. Posts for Saturday and Sunday morning will appear below this post.
Dear Aguanauts :)
This post is the first of its kind. My goal is that we discuss our own beliefs about a given topic, bringing our own understanding, experience and opinions to the table without worrying about what's right, what others may think or whether what one person thinks is more or less important than someone else's thoughts.
That's why this is a discussion and not a debate. It's a place for personal subjectivity, a place for all of us to learn from each other. So...
Tell us your thoughts on bottled water.
Sunday, December 7
Weekend Discussion: Bottled Water
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13 comments:
With no research to back this observation, I trace the bottled water phenomenon to the cryptosporidium outbreak in the St. Paul/Minneapolis municipal supply system of a decade (?) or so ago. It was fear of what was in the tap water that created the bottled water industry. Yet in all the time since, there has been no significant education effort to counter the origination issue.Perhaps that is because the municipal providers aren't selling something where the bottled water industry is.
An unintended consequence of the crypto incident is most municipal providers increased the amount of chlorine used as a sterilizing agent in their supplies resulting in a "bad" taste to tap water further reinforcing the bottled water sales pitch.
Best for temporary measures (i.e. immediate demand for water) but never a long term solution.
Things I wonder about:
Taste
Disposal, Recycling
Jobs
Price
On a personal level, I think bottled water is a total waste of money and resources. I've never bought it, and turn it down even when it's offered for free.
But it terms of water protection and policy, bottled water is at best an interesting side note and at worst a total distraction from the far more significant threats of pollution (especially non-point), flow alteration (dams), inefficiency (waste), and climate change. Water use for bottled water is ridiculously small overall (far less than 1% of total water use), and the number of streams in any way impacted by water bottling can be counted on your fingers (and maybe toes). In contrast, in most parts of the country over 90% of rivers and lakes fail to meet water quality standards for some pollutants, meaning the water is not fit to drink, swim in, or fish from. This is primarily because of the unglamorous but insidious problem of runoff non-point pollution from fertilizers. Compared to agriculture, which uses and pollutes most of our water, bottled water is small-time.
Noah Hall
Great Lakes Law blog (www.GreatLakesLaw.org/blog)
Here in NYC, every year the NY EPA sends out a nice color brochure on the municipal water system
They opened the most recent one with a few really interesting numbers: if you bought two liters of bottled water a day, you'd pay $1,500 a year for that water. The same water from your tap for the year would cost you two cents.
I'm skeptical of attempts to legislate bottled water away as they are trying to do in Toronto (banning it from city facilities); I think a simple information campaign is more than adequate to "dampen" the usage (heh. sorry).
When I buy a bottle of water, if I'm going to spend that much I always treat myself to Perrier. But that's pretty rare and usually after a night of drinking a lot of something else.
It was interesting to me when Mark mentioned MSP - the reason I buy bottled water is because Minneapolis water tastes horrible. The joke is that St. Paul water tastes like the river and Minneapolis water tastes like a lake. This summer, it smelled like a lake too. I drink filtered St. Paul tap water at home and try to fill a stainless bottle and take it with me to work, but that doesn't always happen.
So why do I buy? a combination of convenience and taste. I've lived in the cities for almost ten years, but I still prefer the taste of well water I grew up with, or at least water that doesn't taste like chlorine. I was in grad school and working full time for the last two years, and convenience was a big factor when I was away from home for 13 or 14 hours a day.
The business student in me says that there's demand, sell the product. I buy the grocery store's in-house brand, and don't mind the idea of them getting a better margin than the normal <1% for the industry. But I do think that bottlers should be paying appropriately for the supply they're using.
entertaining anecdote - some of the people my mother works with insist on bottled water all the time. The town water is recognized as being exceptional, and a company bottles & sells it.
OK, I broke down and did a little research. The crypto outbreak was in 1993 in Milwaukee (hey, at least I was in the right part of the country...) and per capita consumption of bottled water went up a bit more than the previous trend line in the next reporting year (IBWA website), but not that much more.
It was a good theory while it lasted.
I still think the co-mingled issues of water quality and taste are the driving factors for consumption with quality a generally bogus issue in this country.
I'd say that bottled water is more of a substitute for other packaged products (e.g., soda or juice) and so to compare it to tap water creates a bit of a skewed result. But to the extent that it is a substitute for tap, I think that there is a perception that it tastes better, which is probably correct for some municipalities. And bottled is probably safer that untreated well water in many cases.
I have a friend that asserts we should all be required to drink bottled water because the cost of treating all our water to drinking water standards is too high.
I do sometimes like the taste of fizzy water. Way back when I had one of those do-it-yourself soda siphons with little CO2 cartridges, and I've no idea how the expense compared. I'd like to be able to get fizzy water when I want it, but I'm not bothered about the quality of tap water.
As an environmentalist, I think the whole push to ban BW is doing our movement a disservice.
I am pretty sure the environmental impact of bottled water production is no greater than those of other products you might find at your local Walmart. BW has a carbon footprint, but so do so many other products. BW generates alot of waste, just like other products. Sure it requires water to manufacture (duh!) but meat production, e.g. raising animals, requires many thousands of liters of water per unit of meat output and no one wants to ban/tax meat for the sake of water conservation.
Environmentalists like to cite the fact that BW is alot more expensive than tap water, and since BW and tap are the same product, BW is a dumb product to buy. But, unless you are willing to concede that consumers are idiots, the fact that people buy bottled water despite its extra cost means that consumers do not treat them as the same product.
I think this is the real reason behind the environmentalist backlash against bottled water. Environmental groups spend a considerable amount of time trying to make people care about the environment. They have made it clear that bottled water is bad, but people still buy it.
And that is what environmentalists hate. It is their inability to accept that some people choose to buy bottled water that has led to this push to ban it.
Environmentalism should not equal totalitarianism, but that is where people seem to be taking it.
Just like most things, I think we should leave to consumers what they want to buy, and to businesses the opportunities to meet those desires better than their competitors (including the sale of bottled water by municiplaties).
I fail to see that the sale and consumption of bottled water is a matter worth much discussion from an environmental standpoint; whatever externalities are involved are best addressed in other ways - by clearer rules regarding ownership of springs/groundwater/rivers, and better pricing of roads.
Very interesting point that people who buy bottled water do not see it as the same product as tap water. Important note to understanding how to market against bottled water.
Arguments for drinking it are normally irrational. You can carry around a stainless steel bottle just the same as a plastic and it doesn't get thrown out to who knows where - landfill, ocean, sometimes recycled into my Adidas athletic shoes. It also ships a long distance when you could get it from your local pipes. Talk about supporting local business - drink local water. And it's been proven to not be any cleaner or safer than tap water - in fact - less safe.
Plus the big kicker - we need to conserve to have enough water because we're using more than there is to go around - and on top of that populations are growing more, developments are expanding, and droughts and floods are more common and severe. The ultimate goal should be to work away from all water wasters - bottled water, soda, meat, etc., etc., etc.
Bottled water has its place. When storms, floods, or disasters disrupt water systems, bottled water is there as a backup. When you're on the road and hesitate to drink from a questionable source, there's bottled water. It's bottled water or nothing on an airplane these days. Our area has excellent tap water, so good, it's bottled and sold all over the country by Pepsico and others. I bottle my own well water in a reusable water bottle to enjoy all day. If people want to spend a buck on a bottle of water, let them. But they'd better put that container in the recycler when they're done with it. I don't want to pick up after them. I'm not their Mom!
For twenty years I lived in a town whose municipal water supply came from deep artesian wells. The water was delicious, and for many of us our favorite beverage.
When I moved to a neighboring city with chlorinated, reservoir-sourced water, I was constantly thirsty. The water tasted bad, so I didn't drink it. For the first time in my life, I bought and kept sodas in the refrigerator.
About that time, personal-sized bottled water appeared on store shelves. I found a brand that tasted almost as good as my hometown well water and didn't look back until a few years ago.
I'm a lifelong recycler, but the waste in the manufacture and transport of those plastic bottles bothered me. Our household now has a Multi-Pure filter on the tap, which improves the taste enough to drink. I fill and carry a portable steel bottle when I go out.
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