Bottled Water Consumption Jumps

by Ling Li

Bottled water—a general term referring to natural mineral water, spring water, and purified water supplied to consumers in bottles—is the world’s fastest-growing commercial beverage. Global consumption of bottled water more than doubled between 1997 and 2005, reaching a total of 164.5 billion liters, or 25.5 liters per person.1 (See Table 1.) While Europe and North America still dominate the bottled water market, consumption in Asia and South America has increased dramatically over the past five years, expanding at 14 percent and 8 percent a year respectively.2

The United States is the world’s largest consumer of bottled water, with Americans drinking 28.7 billion liters in 2005.3 But consumption per person is a different story: in 2005 each Italian, on average, drank more bottled water than anyone else in the world—192 liters, compared with 99 liters for Americans.4 Among the top 10 countries, Brazil, China, and India have doubled or even tripled consumption between 2000 and 2005, though per capita intake in China and India is still far below the global average.5 Altogether, almost three quarters of the world’s bottled water is consumed in the top 10 countries.6

Worldwide, people buy bottled water in order to have safe drinking water, especially consumers in developing countries who face unreliable municipal water supplies, water scarcity, and continual water contamination.7 In most industrial countries, however, where municipal water is better regulated, people drink bottled water also for better taste, for convenience, and as a substitute for other beverages.8 In the United States, calorie-free bottled water has attracted consumers concerned about obesity.9

Urbanization, improved living standards, office working environments, and aggressive marketing strategies have helped boost the global sales of bottled water.10 Home and office delivery of bottled water has become a popular service and supplies nearly 28 percent of the water consumed.11

The difference in cost between bottled and tap water is staggering: the bottled version costs from 240 times to more than 10,000 times as much.12 The Pacific Institute, a California-based think tank, found that bottled water sold in most industrial countries costs $500–1,000 per cubic meter, compared with 50¢ per cubic meter of California’s high-quality tap water.13 Most of what consumers pay goes into production, packaging, transportation, advertising, retailing, marketing, and profits—not the water itself. In 2005, selling bottled water in the United States generated more than $10 billion in revenue.14

Social injustice remains a big concern in terms of bottled water consumption. People who desperately need a better supply of drinking water are usually not able to afford the bottled version.15 In India, upper-class to lower-middleclass families are the main consumers, while tourists dominate bottled water consumption in rural areas.16 The U.N. Development Programme’s Human Development Report 2006 notes that bottled water consumption generates nontangible health benefits but expands the gap between industrial and developing countries.17

Bottled water is regulated as a food product in the United States and Canada, while the European Union has two directives: one on natural mineral water and another on drinking water that includes bottled spring or purified water.18 Regulation codes for bottled water generally cover the composition, contaminants, processing requirements, and labeling.19 The Codex Alimentarius—an international food code initiated by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization— can be adopted by countries that lack national regulations.20

Based on a four-year study of the bottled water industry in the United States, including a test of more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of water, the Natural Resources Defense Council reported in 1999 that bottled water is not always safe to drink or better than tap water.21 Regulations concerning bottled water are generally the same as tap water but weaker in certain standards for microbial contaminants. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates bottled water at the federal level, permits this product to contain certain levels of fecal coliforms, while the Environmental Protection Administration does not allow fecal coliforms in city tap water.22 And when violating the weaker FDA standards, bottled water may still be sold if it is labeled “containing excessive chemical substances” or “excessive bacteria.”23 Bottled water violations are not always reported to the public, or the products are recalled up to 15 months after the problematic water was produced, distributed, and sold.24

The environmental impacts of bottled water also need to be considered. Excessive withdrawal of natural mineral water or spring water to produce bottled water has threatened local streams and groundwater aquifers.25 And producing, bottling, packaging, storing, and shipping bottled water uses significant amounts of energy.26 In addition, millions of tons of oil-derived plastics— mostly polyethylene terephthalate (PET)— are used to make the water bottles.27

PET bottles have comparatively lower environmental impacts than glass or aluminum by requiring less energy to recycle or remanufacture, and they do not release chlorine into the atmosphere when incinerated, which PVC does.28 But without proper recycling, massive amounts of PET bottles in the waste stream pose serious challenges to land uses as well as to water and air quality around landfills.29

In the United States, about 2 million tons of PET bottles end up in landfills each year.30 According to the National Association for PET Container Resources, U.S. use of PET for bottled water without carbonization grew more than 20 percent in 2005, while usage for carbonated soft drinks dropped.31 The recycling rate of PET rose slightly to 23.1 percent in the United States that same year, with a total of 2.3 million tons of waste generated. But this was still far below the 39.7-percent recycling rate achieved 10 years earlier.32 Sales of plastic water bottles under 1 gallon have skyrocketed over the past decade in the United States, from 2.7 billion in 1997 to 28.6 billion in 2005.33 Most of the water is consumed far from residence-based recycling programs. Adding a refund value—a nickel or dime—to the price of bottled water might give consumers an incentive to recycle. The 11 states embracing “bottle bills” with refund provisions have achieved three to four times the recycling rate of other states.34

Includes the following charts and graphs
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Notes
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