Think Outside the Bottle

I have read a number of articles recently about the environmental effects of bottled water. There are a number of issues:

Plastic Bottles - The plastic is made from oil (1.5 million barrels of oil annually), a nonrenewable and soon to be diminishing resource. This is enough oil to fuel some 100,000 US cars for a year. Transportation of bottled water uses more oil. Nearly a quarter of all bottled water crosses national borders to reach consumers. According to the Container Recycling Institute 86 percent of plastic water bottles in the United States are not recycled and end up as garbage and can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.

Water Quality - Bottled water is regulated by the FDA which has weaker regulations than the EPA regulations for tap water. Studies have shown that there is no assurance that just because water comes out of a bottle, it is any cleaner or safer than water from the tap. Roughly 40 percent of bottled water begins as tap water; often the only difference is added minerals that have no marked health benefit.

Cost - Bottled water can cost ten thousand times more than tap water. No wonder that bottled water is not only the fastest growing segment of the entire beverage industry, it is also the most profitable.

Water resources - Corporations are exercising their power to get access to springs, aquifers and municipal water supplies to keep their profits growing, with little regard for the environmental impacts of large water withdrawals.


Corporate Accountability International has a public education campaign across the US called Think Outside the Bottle, to raise awareness of the importance of protecting our public water systems, to build the broad base of support needed to protect our water over the long haul, and to pressure the corporations that profit from it.