Is Bottled Water Bad for the Environment?

Everything needs to be viewed in perspective. The average NA consumer on municipal services consumes (all uses) anywhere from 268 to 427 litres of water per day . To produce a 130 gram orange takes 28 litres of water. A ton of steel takes 215,000 litres of water.

So whether a litre of bottled water takes 1.39 litres of water to be produced or 4.5 litres is a moot point. The use of water does not mean all is lost or wasted. In the end, water is re-cycled and re-enters the hydro-geological cycle. Excess water is disposed or sent to sewage treatment plants and eventually discharged to a receiving stream. Even the water the person drinks from the bottle is eventually discharged/excreted from the body. Does that mean we have wasted the water. No it does not.

Bottled water has its place and uses. I do think we overuse bottled water where in most municipalities the water delivered to the tap is better than most bottled water. There are always exceptions. In the USA and Canada as well as most of the western countries all water delivered by municipal utilities must meet stringent criteria and must be monitored regularly. I would consume water if I know it is regulated and monitored. I do not feel as comfortable drinking water where I have doubts; rural private well, third world countries, or where I do not enjoy the taste of the water from a municipal system.

If the real beef with the bottled water industry is with plastic consumption, I would suppose that glass containers are an alternative. But it does take a lot of water to produce a single glass bottle. I am guessing that a lot of the environmental objection to bottled water stem from the use of petroleum products and that use extends to all uses including the fuel we burn. And we have been down that road too often.

My wife had me fill up the water bottles in town yesterday. $4.80 for 13 gallons.

She thought that was cheap!

I have a hydrant on the side of the house that will give you that much water for about 1/4 of a cent and still less than a full cent if you factor in the cost of the well plus all the plumbing systems for our place based on a 40 year life expectancy.

Maybe some smart water would give a better return ???

So would a properly aimed rubber mallet.

I am on a well and consume water regularly from it. I did spend money to test the water for a wide range of bacteria, chemicals and physical parameters. I re-did the analysis recently after about 6 years time lapse. I was pleased with the results both times and did not have any reservations about drinking it. Even though no bacteria, from a health pov, were indicated, I still installed a UV system with a large flux just to assure safety at the tap. The only other treatment is a water softener. Do you think your wife would be more accepting of your house hold well water if you had proof of potability? Who knows, maybe you will find your water better than the water you fetch. I have seen bottled water companies sell water from the same source aquifer as nearby municipal water. The tap and bottled water were the same. Go figure.

We are often influenced by what we see others doing and Hollywood has certainly promoted the kitchen water dispenser. Perhaps a good fridge with a proven well water source could be used to replace buying water. Cripes!, we live like third world countries. What a pain to fetch if it is not needed.

"Do you think your wife would be more accepting of your house hold well water if you had proof of potability? Who knows, maybe you will find your water better than the water you fetch. I have seen bottled water companies sell water from the same source aquifer as nearby municipal water. The tap and bottled water were the same. Go figure."

She is more of the 'if i am not spending money for it it's not good enough' mentality.

A while back she was on a kick to get exercise. Not just any exercise that served a purpose at the same time would do. It had to be paid for exercise that serves absolutely zero function or purpose other than to burn up money.

Last month we were in Turkey. I filled her water bottles countless times from the city taps. Never told her and she never once said anything about the taste either but then the stuff in the bottles tasted just like the city water anyway.

I think our home water bottles may go through a similar experiment one of thes weeks.

Too funny. We all develop our own survival techniques.

It's the science experiment of a life I live.

YES!

Think of all the energy squandered "filtering" water and making plastic bottles and shipping them.

Then, disposal of the trash.

Tap water is just fine.

Billions are wasted on this fad/folly!

Billions are wasted on this fad/folly!
WRONG. Billions are made, not wasted. This is economic self-sustaining, long-term suicide, as the plastic bottles are collected after use and recycled. I have to put mine in separate plastic disposal bags (which I pay for, and are probably made from the discarded water bottles, which I also paid for); I then pay for the refuse removal as well, and if I dare get thirsty, I must pay retail for bottled water (again). Many jobs are created, including many that have have great perks, like company car, fat bonus for attending work each day, and free water on tap at the office, for personal consumption.

The scenario is reminiscent of a lone aircrash survivor having to eat his own leg to survive. (you gotta crap to survive...no eat= no crap= death).

Like I said; wasted!

Well I just bought a case of water some time ago, we keep it down here in FL as an emergency stash....but the bottles offer a convenient and portable solution to having a personal water supply on hand at all times....I refill the bottles with tap water once I have the bottles and use them for refrigerated drinking water during the day....but I think the best use I have heard is that the surplus supply of plastic bottles provide clean drinking water for third world poor countries....It seems the bottles can be painted black on one side and filled with local water...then placed clear side up can be stored for the day on corrugated metal roofs...the bottles attain a temp high enough(120ºF+) to kill harmful bacteria....then the water can be placed in an earth pit to cool, and then they have a safe low tech low cost water supply...It seems these bottles have an important role to play in today's world.....I also might add that the created industry of bottled drinking water does add to the economy, and anything that adds jobs and strengthens the economy without harming anybody, is a good thing....imo

"Evian" is "naïve" backwards.

Based on the answers seen on here and the OP, I just had to chime in.

(1) The extra water is used in processing the drinking water, and there has to be some concentrate (also called brine, or reject) that is disposed of down the sewer.

Not many can say they have a water purification system that is zero liquid discharge to waste, maybe not any. Processing other beverages uses even more water, amazingly enough.

(2) Producing the bottles whether derived from petroleum or corn requires a bit of water (cooling the injection molding system), cooling the plastic production, etc. I do not believe anyone has actually made an audit of that, but it could be prodigious.

(3) It makes (to me) a great deal more sense to buy a rugged container that will last, can be cleaned, etc. Refill that however you like, but a home RO system will still waste at least that extra 40% (if not a lot more). Most municipal supplies are regulated to the extent of what is "allowed" in the water as to salinity, bacteria, etc., at least here in the States. Other countries, not so much. Maybe just add a really good carbon block filter if the total dissolved solids in the local water is not so high.

kevinm,You completely miss the point. "Does that mean we have wasted the water".

Not only have we wasted water to make "water, we have wasted energy to make that water.

That doesn't even begin to address the resources and energy wasted to make the process equipment for making "water" from water, the resources used to dispose of or purify the wasted process water, the transportation, storage, distribution, and sale of the "water".

Now, after partial consumption, we have the waste from unused "water" left in the bottles, the waste of transporting the containers to the land fill, or in some cases a recycling center, the cost of removing the tons and tons of bottles discarded by idiots in parks, lakes, oceans and trash cans all over the world.

The real beef I have with the bottled "water" scam is that in 99% of the time tap water is just fine. Glass bottles are no better.

You use tap water, and you said, "The tap and bottled water were the same. Go figure."

James Stewart, the cynic in me says that noone knows for sure most of the time if the bottled water they are drinking has been purified in any way.

tcmtech, maybe your wife really knew that you were refilling her water bottles and pretended not to know, just to humor you.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, my wife buys 2-3 cases of bottled water every week. I humor her, and let her.

" I humor her, and let her."

Quit it!

"tcmtech, maybe your wife really knew that you were refilling her water bottles and pretended not to know, just to humor you. "

Believe me her sense of humor does not run that deep.

As long as she doesn't know life is fine. Once she thinks she knows all hell breaks loose until she forgets which fortunately usually only takes a few shiny objects or something new to argue about to swing her attentions away long enough to take effect.

Look! A squirrel!

Some days thats all it takes! Or, "Hey look what your cat found!"

I too think we over use bottled water and it is quite often a waste of resources. But so is developing golf course in deserts or even subdivision in deserts. Those are the real depleting factors of aquifers in areas where water is scarce. I have worked on many bottled water initiatives and have seen systems developed where they should not have been developed. Even when we recommended against such. Sometimes it would be a small problem like uranium in the water or barium. But the developers never wanted negative feedback on anything we said. The bottled water industry is self regulated for the most part. So they go ahead with a project anyway. I have even seen the developers put mistakes on their contents label. You know like fluoride content moving a decimal place over to reflect lower and sometimes mistaken transposed to read to high. Yet it makes it to the store shelf. Our stance was always based on regulated water standards. To be fair the bottled water standards from the industry association were often more stringent than those regulated. There is just a serious lack of monitoring on the part of the association. A developer can opt out and sell water anyway but may eventually fall under some food and drug compliance. In the meantime these systems exist in NA. I should even say that I was provided bottled water on a European plane where Nitrates were well over the acceptable limits for municipal water. It is a wild west show to many extents.

As for waste of water, I have little concern for reason previously stated. Energy waste is a problem because of the scale of acceptance of bottled water. There is still a niche that bottled water fits. As for trash, we humans need to practice recycling more and produce less waste. That is part of the problem of bottled water but we could easily be talking about other packaging where the use of plastic is obscene.

As for testing water that was bottled from the same aquifer that a municipal water supply obtained its water. True story and people paid big dollars for the bottled water....that was the sarcasm of go figure.

WTH heck. I preview and get TCM's last entry.

Golf courses in arid places have in the past used high quality well water, but I hope this is shifting over to remediated waste water.

As far as it goes, the technology is there that would allow us to use water over and over and over, but who actually wants to? There is that "eeeeeeeewwwww" factor, of the NIMBY factor.

Even if you have the facts that support water recycling to whatever desired purity/ bio-purity then you are faced with educating a public that refuses to take in facts of any kind whatsoever when it comes to an "emotional" issue. Best bet: put in the water project anyway, save the resource, and tell them you are blending back in some of the nasty surface water/well water, so endusers can taste that fishy taste again.

Most of the water we use has been recycled. Sometimes quite quickly in the case of river sources and multiple downstream users. Sometimes the recycling can be thousands of years from aquifers. Ground water is often safer than surface water because of the long residence time. But that does not mean is is always safe. Many dangerous metals, radionuclides, TDS, sodium, and even physical parameters can enter the once pure water. Farm applications of fertilizer can affect the medium and short term residence in aquifers. And the list could easily be expanded.

Yes a eeeeeeewwww factor strikes me as a good response to fully recycled water from toilet to tap in one short step. Perhaps our future space travellers will have to content with that sort of water treatment out of necessity. Perhaps there may even be areas of our world where such treatment is now required.

I would contend that on this planet, buying good water in bulk may be more effective than our technological desire to treat it. Think about rivers, particularly those in the far north that empty into the ocean. Fresh to salty is seconds and mega cubic meters per second going to waste. Why not have bulk tankers fill up from the river before it enters the salty world. The water could be taken off the river at slow enough rates not to affect any spawning ground or ecosystem at the ocean edge. Our country had such an opportunity to sell water in this manner but was cut off for political reasons. Maybe some objectors thought all the water was going to irrigate a desert golf course.

"Why not have bulk tankers fill up from the river before it enters the salty world."

It costs $180,000.00 USD per year to operate a tanker truck.

The river water is by no means pure, and would require treatment.

It may come to this. Who knows?

I was actually thinking of ocean going ship tankers delivering water to some areas of the world. You can be sure treatment is still required but I am guessing there are rivers that can be treated readily with filtration and disinfection and be many times cheaper than tank truck or even treating saline well water. To compare that to a typical pump and treat water would mean adding on the cost of loading and shipping.

Maybe so.

I'm not saying it isn't doable.

The cost is only part of the problem.

Distribution is still an issue.

I remember seeing a documentary about some strange illnesses in Chicago with deaths, where the sewage treatment facility was basically failing, and was bulk dumping incompletely treated effluent into the lake not more than a couple miles upstream in current from the city water intake from the lake. Can anyone say "cryptosporidium"?

The problem was "corrected", according to the documentary. I don't think "crypto" is entirely all that hard to get rid of....the organism is quite large compared to most bacteria or other pathogens. Microfiltration and downstream chlorination go a long way to protecting public health. Oh, did I mention the evil chlorine that our government wants to do away with? Oops.

Chlorination is certainly going to be a standard water treatment practice for the interim as far as I can tell. However, it does have limitations and may even exacerbate a problem when crptosporidium or giardia is present. Some of the more vulnerable water treatment plants have used ozone or UV or a combination of disinfection in those cases. The standards for filtration under the safe Drinking Water (US) or the Canadian treatment levels require a remove the oocysts to a level of 2 log removal. There are also no readily available indicators to know if a water is free of the oocysts: although, methods for rapid identification are being developed. A standard of not more than 0.1 NTU turbidity level on 99% of the monthly samples has also been applied. Most of us are quite safe from such infections but there is a population with immune suppression that are concerned. The practice of treatment has been to use chemically assisted filtration or NSF approved 1 micron or better filtration. Nominal filtration does not meet the standard. Many new water treatment plants are using microfiltration as a standard and those existing plants are striving for 1 micron or a minimum of 2 log removal. Those who are most susceptible still need to take special precautions with water. Perhaps that is one of the legitimate niche markets for bottled water.

I got Giardia once.

Best damn rapid weight loss method you will ever find!

The microfiltration units I was referring to are essentially the same configuration as RO membranes (spiral wound on tube), and are a true membrane filter, just without the salt rejection characteristics of nanofiltration or reverse osmosis membranes. They are useful for operation with chlorinated water also, since these are not fabricated from thin-film polyamide on substrate. I think they can be polysulfone, not sure. They can also be back-washed if (when) the differential pressure get a bit high. It is my understanding that a nominal greater than 3 log (or greater) reduction in all organisms including viruses is possible - but not guaranteed since there are still O-ring seals that can fail to seal off under the wrong circumstances.

ATP testing is available for rapid grab sample tests, turbidity also, and I would not doubt that DNA testing of target organisms would be possible in the future.

Thanks to all who have commented on my blog entry. I'm glad it encouraged some conversation and spirited debate - and a bit of humor as well! I'm just now getting back into the swing of things here on CR4, but am already thinking about my next blog entry. What topics would you me to write about in 2014? They need to related to rubber, plastic, and sealing technologies, of course, but there seems to be a great deal of interest in how these things affect the economy and the environment. Please let me know by commenting below. And here's to a great 2014 for us all!

And to you sir as well!

I would like to see more of a push to get rid of the wrong O-rings being installed in chemical pumps. Or change the pump codes to mark them approved for sulfuric acid, or whatever chemical is the nastiest thing they can survive. Not that a pump used for 93% sulfuric acid would automatically be OK with 50% caustic soda. But could they at least stop using BUNA rubber for O-rings, and switch over to Viton so that most of the industrial chemicals do not tear up the ball check cartridges? I meant is the extra $0.25 all that hard for the manufacturers to get through their pointy little accountant noggins?

Here is an interesting take on bottled water.