Brendan

The market for bottled watter grows every year and in the US it currently stands at 15B $US and set to pass 16B$ next year.

In the last few months, the bottled water industry has been taking a fair beating in the media. Quite rightfully so in my mind. Bottled water seems like a very large waste of energy in our already energy-strapped economy. Articles like this this point out how environmentally all that bottled water is. In fact the water has to be trucked around to get to its destination, rather than flowing through pipes for city water which is much much more efficient. Brita and Nagene even teamed up to try and get people to use Brita products to clean water and reuseable Nalgene bottles to drink from with the http://www.filterforgood.com/ website. This Nalege-Brita team seems like an especially good idea to me. Once can still get good clean water without producing the mountains of plastic bottle waste.

However, in order to combat this bad rap that the bottled water industry is getting, Kim Jeffery, president and CEO of Nestle Waters North America wrote an opinion article for the Salt Lake Tribune. However most of the comments that he makes are pretty much laughable. He points out that “bottled water represents less than 1 percent of the municipal solid waste that ends up in landfills”. This is already a huge amount, 1% of landliff garbage from bottled water alone! Not to mention the other countless beverages available in bottles and cans. 1 percent might sound like a low number but that is still a huge amount. The total amount of landfill garbage in america is estimated 248.7 million tons (souce. 1% of which is 2.5 million tons of water bottles alone, all going into landfill! That is an estimated 38 billion (with a B!) bottles going straight into landfill each year!

The main argument that Jeffrey raises is that water is better for people than drinking cola. While this point is valid, is the bottled water that his company offers better than drinking tap water? Although, admitedly, Nestle Waters has taken some steps to reduce the environmental impact of their water bottling operation, it still is an increidble waste of resourses to be shipping so much water around. It is frustating reading how one someone can justify this amount of waste.

With an impending energy crisis, surely bottled water could be one of the first things to go. The plastic bottle production alone uses 1.5million barrels of oil annually. This is enough to fuel 100 000 cars for a year or power 190 000 homes.

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