Fast Facts About Bottled Water

Hi! This is just a super quick post to get you thinking and stimulate your own research, here goes:

It takes between 2 and 6 TIMES the amount of water contained in the bottle to make the plastic bottle itself.

To create bottled water products, the water is pumped, transported, packed, chilled, transported again, then held in store where more often than not it is also maintained chilled. All this takes an enormous amount of energy, oil, and greenhouse gas emissions before that cap even comes off. (choose zero waste products instead, biome has an AWESOME range)

"But I recycle!"

Sorry, you're not off the hook either, recycling single use plastic (while WAY better than chucking it in the ocean or in landfill) is not the wonderful answer to plastic pollution we dream it to be. Recycling is not a magical process, again it takes resources to collect it, transport it, sort it, transport it again, process it and turn it into something new - each step of this process takes more energy and emits more greenhouse gasses. Then there's the question of what to do with recycleable material - most plastics like the humble disposable water bottle get 'Downcycled' which means that unlike closed-loop recycling where you can use the recycled materials much like you would use the original materials, Downcycling means the resource get used as something "less desirable" such as PET fibres mixed into other substances - which usually are NOT recycled again, thus resulting in plastic waste anyway. And while it may be possible to closed-loop recycle some substances, it is often the case that it is cheaper to make them brand new which means that our wonderful economic system drives the production of single-use plastic.

Want to be environmentally friendly? Just pack a reuseable drink bottle. It's not that hard, AND it's much easier on your wallet (also tap water has much more stringent controls and is monitored for quality in a much more regulated fashion and is consistently shown to be safer than bottled water anyway).

Sources and links:
waterfootprint.org: (pdf)
watercalculator: the hidden water in everyday products
coolaustralia: bottled water
popularmechanics: science & environment
choice: Is bottled water safer than tap water

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