Bottled Water and The Environment

1. Bottled Water and The Environment What we’re going to talk about today: Become an informed consumer: 1. Composition of bottled water 2. Environmental impacts 3. Social implications

2. Why do people drink bottled water? http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/bottledwater.JPG http://promotehealth.info

3. Bottled water benefits • Easy delivery of potable water: • Disaster relief • Contaminated public/private water supply • No access to any other supply • Healthier than soda!

4. How did we get here??? • Bottled water has been popular in Europe for many decades due to poor quality tap water and fondness for sparkling water • Bottled water got a huge break in 1993 with the Milwaukee cryptosporidium outbreak

5. 1. Composition & health implications http://media.readersdigest.com.au/dynamic

6. Regulations Tap Water (EPA) Bottled Water (FDA) No reports to consumers are required Microbial Tests once per week Tests for only ¼ of the chemical contaminants listed by SDWA • Detailed Consumer Reports (water source, contaminant test violations) to consumers • Microbial tests several times per day • Tests 4 times the number of chemical contaminants as required by the SDWA

7. Corvallis Water & SDWA Effect: cancer & liver damage Effect: death Effect: cancer

8. Research on Bottled Water Contaminants (2008) • Environmental Working Group (EWG) found 38 pollutants in 10 major brands • Average of 8 contaminants per brand • Disinfection byproducts, fertilizer residue, and pain medication • Walmart's Sam’s Choice and Giant's Acadia store brands bore the chemical signature of standard municipal water treatment…

9. Research on Bottled Water Contaminants (2008) • In other words, it was tap water. The only differences: • the price tag (bottled water is 1900x more) • the contaminants (the bottled water exceeded CA state standards for cancer-causing disinfectant pollutants) *Environmental Working Group

10. Environmental Working Group: Bottled Water Scorecard (2011) • Survey of 173 unique bottled water products • 18% fail to list the source and 32% disclose nothing about the treatment or purity of the water • Only two of 188 bottled water brands listed source, treatment and purity • Close to half of all bottled water is sourced from municipal tap water • It takes approximately 2000 times more energy to produce an equivalent amount of tap water** *Water Watch 2010 and BMC 2010 **Gleick 2009 EWG Bottled Water Scorecard

11. 2. Environmental Impactsof the bottles

12. Path To Market (International Bottled Water Association)

13. What is a basin/aquifer, and why does it matter if we pump water out of it? http://www.cleanwateroxford.org/watershed.htm http://www.sciencemadesimple.co.uk/page72g.html http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthgwaquifer.html

14. Life Cycle Impacts: Production • It takes 72 billion gallons of water per year just to produce the empty bottles used for bottled water. ~109,000 Olympic Swimming Pools **Emily Gersema, Associated Press (2003) ***FAO and Earth Policy Institute (2006)

15. Life Cycle Impacts: Production • It takes ~900 million gallons of oil to make empty PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) bottles for bottled water.

16. Life Cycle Impacts: Shipping “We're moving 1 billion bottles of water around each week in ships, trains, and trucks in the United States alone… That's a weekly convoy equivalent to 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water.” - Message in a bottle by Chris Fishman for www.fastcompany.com (2007) “A British study has found that drinking a bottle of water has the same impact on the environment as driving a car a kilometer. Bottled water production generates 600 times more CO2 than drinking tap water.” - http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23238015-1248,00.html#

17. Life Cycle Impacts: Disposal • Many plastic bottles are NOT being recycled. • Recycling rate has fallen from 54% in 1994 to47.5% in 2009. • US consumes 50 Billion 16-ounce Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles (167 bottles per person) Water Follies (2002), www.designinsite.dk, msnbc, 2005; fast company.com (2007)

18. Life Cycle Impacts: Disposal Plastics do not biodegrade, they photodegrade (They break into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic that are often still very difficult to reincorporate into ecological systems.)

20. 3. The Business of Water http://images01.tzimg.com/

21. Sources of Bottled Water www.fda.gov

22. Types of Bottled Water • Artesian Water/Artesian Well Water - Water from a well that taps an aquifer in which the water level stands at some height above the top of the aquifer. Not as valuable as Spring Water, but may be the same water. • Drinking Water - Water that is bottled sanitarily without added sweetners or chemical additives. Flavors, extracts, or essences may be added. • Mineral Water - Water containing no less than 250 parts per million total dissolved solids. Many times from a geothermal well or spring. • Purified Water - Water from which all minerals and any other solids have been removed. May also be called distilled, deionized, or reverse osmosis. • Sparkling Water - Water that after treatment, and possible replacement with carbon dioxide, contains the same amount of carbon dioxide that it had as it emerged from the source. • Spring Water- Water derived from an underground formation from which water flows naturally to the surface of the earth. It must be collected only at the spring or through a bore hole tapping the underground formation. • Well Water - Water from a hole drilled in the ground which taps the water of an aquifer.  http://www.soc.duke.edu/~s142tm16/glossary.htm

23. Bottled Water vs. Tap Water • Bottled water is a lot more expensive than tap water. Corvallis Tap Water = $0.003 per gallon • Brita Filter Pitcher ($25.00) and filter ($8.00) = tap water with the filter gets us to $0.10 to $0.12 /gal. • Bottled Waters: Mt. Shasta = $2.56/gal to Perrier = $5.03/gal Aquafina = $3.77/gal Dasani = $3.38/gal Park City “Ice” Water = $18.00/gal

24. Bottled Water vs. Tap Water “It struck me…that all you had to do is take the water out of the ground and then sell it for more than the price of wine, milk, or, for that matter, oil.” –Perrier Chairman (1988) If the water we use at home cost what even “cheap” bottled water costs,our monthlywater bill in Mt. Shasta prices would be over $21,000.

25. Bottled Water is Big Business • REVENUES (2007) • $10 to $15 Billion in U.S • $47.5 to $100 Billion Worldwide (Beverage Marketing Corp. World Water Forum 2006; 2007) In 2002, bottled water corporations spent $93.8 million for advertising. (Boston Globe, September 25, 2005) Profit Margins range from 15% for small bottlers to 600% for large bottlers (NRDC, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works)

26. Who Dominates Market In Oregon? Nestle = 29% Crystal Geyser (currently with Dannon)= 20% Pepsi = 20% Coca-Cola = 18% Others = EartH20 and other smaller bottlers who are our neighbors = 6%

28. Recent Backlash in US • An Estimated 20 universities have banned the sale of bottled water on campus- not OSU (the Register Guard Oct 20, 2010) • Should OSU? Why or why not? http://takebackthetap.org/

29. Rethink water! • Take home messages • Tap water is better regulated than bottled water, plus more environmentally and socially responsible (lower carbon footprint, less plastic pollution, not supporting mega corporations) • Actions • Carry your own water in a reusable BPA-free bottle, or just drink from a glass or fountain • If you have to buy a drink that comes in a plastic bottle, read the label (look for the water source and how it was treated), look for environmentally friendly bottles, and then REUSE the bottle several times before you recycle it! • Rethink • Water is essential to life… Should it be for sale?