Bottled water has become a staple product in America over the last decade and it is a fact that it is here to stay. In his testimony to the House of Representatives in 2009 the Principal Deputy Commissioner of The FDA Joshua Sharstein stated that, “between 1998 and 2008, the average per capita consumption of bottled water has increased from 14.7 to 28.5 gallons.” However there are several issues with bottled water, namely purity, cost and recycling rate and in all of them bottled water is inferior to tap water.
Purity
Bottled water is considered a “food” and therefore is regulated by the FDA while tap water is regulated by the EPA. The EPA’s regulations for tap water are generally much stricter and therefore tap water from municipal systems is usually significantly cleaner the bottled water because the bottling companies are not held as accountable. There are several differences between the agencies regulations however some of the important ones include: Required Disinfection, Testing frequency for bacteria, pathogen filtering, and violation reporting. What it boils down to is that tap water regulations are much more strict that those on bottled water. One of the other big issues with bottled water is that its labeling can be misleading. About 25% of bottle water is just tap water. Coca-Cola’s Dasani product fell under fire in the UK because when it was released it was advertised as “purified still water” while in fact it is just purified tap water.
Cost
In comparison to tap water, bottled water is much more expensive. Tap water averages about .002$/gal while if u assume 1$/ 20 oz. bottle of water, which is a typical price from a vending machine, that comes out to 6.40$/gal of water. Even giving bottled water a significant advantage and only assuming it costs about 1.25$/gal (typical gallon jug) this still makes it 625 times as expensive as tap water while if you use the 20 oz. model bottled water is 3200 times as expensive as tap water. While some of this cost is going into transportation and production of the bottles much of it is pure profit for the bottling companies.
Recycling
In 2003 about 12% of “custom” plastic bottles, the category in which water bottles falls, were recycled. In comparison the recycling rate for soft drinks bottles is about 30%. One of the issues is that “most bottled water is consumed away from home, usually at a park, in an office or even while driving – areas where there’s usually no recycling.” (Patricia Franklin, Director of the Container Recycling Institute in an msnbc article). One of Franklin’s proposed idea’s is a universal national recycling deposit that would financially encourage recycling. On that note the states that do have a bottle deposit program have shown in some cases up to a 95% recycling rate. An issue with the national deposit option to encourage plastic recycling is that it has received a lot of resistance from the beverage industry. However, there is another option. While the traditional PET bottles can take up to 1000 years to break down in a landfill the bottling company Biota has been making bottles out of biodegradable plastic from corn starch. Biota claims that its bottles can biodegrade within 80 days.
In the above categories it should be fairly clear that bottled water is inferior to tap water. Bottled water is not regulated as heavily and therefore can be less pure. It also costs more and generates significantly more waste in the form of used bottles. If people want to have portable water they should just buy reusable water bottles.
-John Marshall
I agree that in the United States bottled water can be less pure, more expensive, and create more waste than tap water. I use reusable water bottles everyday of my life and encourage others to use them as well. Even though it costs more to invest in a reusable bottle at first, in the long run it will save you money and is worth the extra start up cost.
ReplyDeleteEven though I encourage the use of reusable water bottles and the use of tap water, in some places it is necessary to buy and drink bottled water. In developing countries such as Mexico, India, China, and Indonesia, residents and tourists do not trust the quality of the tap water. It's a known warning if you are traveling to Mexico that you don't drink tap water. In these countries people pay the extra money to drink the safer bottled water. So, in some cases I see how it is better to buy bottled water.
I agree that bottled water is needed in developing countries, and also in some areas in the United States. For example, my grandmother lives in an area that advises its residents to not drink the tap water if they have high blood pressure or other health problems, it just doesn't taste right. But for the most part, tap water in the US is clean and perfectly safe to drink.
ReplyDeleteIn my freshman biology class, my teacher showed us a youtube clip on the history of bottled water. Basically, the soda industries saw their sales leveling out, and decided they need a new product, bottled water. Back then, no one would even think of paying the extra money for something they could easily get at home, so the soda industry carefully "manufactured demand" for bottled water. They basically developed a scare campaign to discredit the safety and quality of tap water. This video was a really simple to understand, and I recommend watching it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKnyCdbzo60
The book “Bottlemania” provides a thorough analysis of the controversy between tap water and bottled water. The book elaborates on the advantages and disadvantages of both tap and bottle, just like you have. The author also points out how bottled water companies form monopolies on certain watersheds, so that local municipalities have no control over their water supply. The water companies make agreements with policymakers ensuring that the municipalities will be compensated monetarily for giving up their water supply. When the people of the municipality attempt to regain domain over their own water supply, they often lose out to the bottled water companies because the bottled water companies have purchased the rights to the supply. Lastly, the author contains a whole chapter on the taste of tap water and bottled water. He conducted a taste experiment on a man who was supposedly a specialist on bottled water. The author concluded that the taste specialist could not tell the difference between tap water and bottled water in the blindfolded taste experiment. In my opinion, some bottled water companies drive the prices of water far too high and market their product as something more than what it is in the United States. However, I do agree that certain countries should require the usage of bottled water because they do not have systems that provide clean tap water.
ReplyDeleteI found this post to be very interesting. For the most part, I would agree that the purity of tap water is the same or better than that of bottled water. However, would this hold true for some regions in Appalachia negatively impacted by Mountain Top Removal. This process can be extremely hazardous to those living near MTR sites because the valley fill gets into the streams and watersheds. As the links to the articles below describe, sometimes communities are forced to rely on bottled water because the tap water is so contaminated. The EPA is clearly failing at its job of regulating the water in these cases. Since bottled water is much more expensive than tap water, and since these Appalachian communities are generally poverty stricken, I would argue that this might even be a form of Environmental Injustice. People in these poorer Appalachian communities are forced to make a choice between drinking contaminated water or paying high prices for clean bottled water. I think that rather than write off areas in the U.S. or abroad as not having safe drinking water, the causes for this really need to be assessed. To me, it doesn't make sense to require poorer people and poorer countries to pay for bottled water if they could figure out what is causing these problems and try to fix the cause rather than treat the symptoms.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1971709,00.html
http://mountainpledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/MTRTalkingPoints.pdf
I do not drink bottled water for the environmental injustice this commodity causes and for the scarcity of our water resources. I also read the book "Bottlemania" and found that the water bottle industry is making exorbitant amounts of profit from this precious commodity. Corporate Accountability International is a non-profit that began the Think Outside the Bottle campaign, which is trying to end corporate control over our valuable resources. I volunteered for this campaign last year and helped facilitate a Tap Water Challenge across campus. The results showed that many people could not taste the difference from tap water versus bottled water. So why is bottled water such a popular commodity? Bottled water is mainly consumed for its convenience and because the bottled water industry has instilled a mentality of dirty tap water. However, it is quite the opposite, as it has been previously stated that the EPA has stricter regulations for tap water, which is regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act. Although, I do believe there are areas in the United States, such as the Appalachian community, where public tap water is contaminated and buying bottled water is their only option. ]=
ReplyDeleteBottled water industries spent nearly $100,000,000 on marketing campaigns to dissuade the public against public tap water. Thus, name-brand corporations such as Coke, Pepsi, and Nestle are making profits off lies and ridding us of our rights to water!
It should also be mentioned that this industry creates so much plastic waste that these guilty corporations buy out land in developing countries to shift our waste onto them! Check out this link that proves so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0 (This also happens to be the same link posted by Frankie)
After working with the Think Outside the Bottle campaign, many consumers were shocked at the results of their purchases. 1 out of 6 Americans only drink bottled water, for the fear of tap water. The public must be educated to slow down corporate control! For more information check out: http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/water-campaign
The privatization of water, which includes bottled water, is an economic gold mine.
ReplyDeleteThe film Flow: For the Love of Water shows the effects of water privatization in great detail. Water privatization companies take advantage of poor communities such as that of El Alto, a poor city built on the outskirts of La Paz, one of the major cities in Bolivia, and takes their water for their own private use while contaminating nearby water sources that the indigenous have used for generations. I am entirely against the privatization of water. In Bolivia, "...nearly 1 out of every 10 children will die before the age of 5 and most of those deaths are related to illnesses that come from a lack of clean drinking water." (Jim Schultz, Founder of the Democracy Centre in Bolivia) The people of El Alto suffer as a result of Suez's poor waste management.
I have been to El Alto. My father's family is from La Paz Bolivia and I have seen the toxicity of the river. It barely flows down from El Alto to La Paz now and is putrid. I cannot support water privatization and I cannot support water bottling when I see damage such as this. I suggest watching the Flow film if you want to learn more about water privatization.