Oct 01, 2007

Water: Our Greatest Decadence

by Laura Starita

What is more precious than gold, more expensive than oil, and more casually wasted than both?

Water – truly our most precious commodity. Most citizens of industrialized countries are blessed with a municipal water system that is free of toxins and pollutants, is tested frequently and transparently and supplies water to everyone with few exceptions and at extremely low cost. Yet despite the apparent ubiquity of clean, fresh drinking water, Americans still consume around $15 billion of bottled water every year, according to a recent article in Fast Company—and that number is growing at about 10 percent a year.

In the grand scheme of addictions, the American attachment to bottled water seems relatively benign. After all, we need water. And water sure beats soda or juice for healthy hydration, so it makes sense to also encourage children to drink it in mini-bottles dispensed in school vending machines, say. But as the global news source Agence France-Presse points out, our need to have our water delivered to us in single-serving sizes is taking an out-sized toll on the environment. Consider all the plastic used to make the bottles, and the fossil fuels used to bottle, stack and ship the bottled product, and then the land-fill resources taken up by all those empty, discarded shells (few are reused and due to a broken, conflicted system, few are recycled, as a New York Times Magazine article shows) and the total cost of bottled water adds up.

Of course, in a country where bottled water consumption is not a question of health necessity – as it is in countries such as Mexico where tap water contamination makes unfiltered use of municipal sources a hazard – it all comes down to preference. Many U.S. consumers believe that bottled water is healthier than tap (probably untrue, as municipal water is tested for more contaminants with much more frequency than bottled) and others claim to prefer the taste of bottled water to the stuff that comes from the tap. In reality, the vast majority of random tasters given a variety of waters to choose from cannot distinguish between bottled and tap, let alone between their preferred brand and a competing product. Part of that may stem from the fact that a lot of water bottled sold today is tap water. Dasani and Aquafina, the signature brands of Coke and Pepsi, respectively – are simply municipal water filtered and bottled.

As the plethora of recent articles indicates, we may be turning the tide on bottled water. UNESCO claims that annual funding for the millennium development goal of halving the number of people around the world who lack access to safe drinking water is short by at least $10 billion. Now imagine if we could decrease our bottled water consumption by two-thirds and use the money to bring safe drinking water to the water-scarce regions? Refocusing on the availability of safe water for everyone on the planet, rather than on its packaging and branding, would have a huge positive impact on global health and the environment. 

That would be something we could all lift a glass (of tap water) to.

Fast Company: Message in a Bottle

Agence-France Presse: Bottled Water Public Enemy Number One

New York Times Magazine: The Unintended Consequences of Hyperhydration

Financial Times: Bottled Water and the Madness of Crowds