The Bottled Water Issue: Water as the Next Oil?
Recently I had the opportunity to meet with Emily Posner and Amy Dowley of Defending Water For Life and Food and Water Watch, respectively. Amy also works for Take Back the Tap. They’ve both devoted themselves to educating others about the impact of bottled water and working to replace bottled water with more sustainable alternatives. I’ve already posted about the economic reasons for not buying water, but Emily and Amy also brought up some other strong reasons to not buy bottled water.
During the conversation, Emily mentioned a daunting prospect: water may well be the next oil. Less than a week later, Common Dreams affirmed her speculation. Apart from the obvious economics (tap water is approximately $0.002 per gallon, versus the $0.89 to $8.26 per gallon) and environmental issues (the 17.6 million barrels of oil required to create the plastic bottles can fuel more than one million cars), there’s also concern about the repercussions of the water being shipped away from where it’s needed and the transfer of water from the public to the private domain.
It’s hard to imagine, particularly in Maine where the rain can go for days without letting up, concerns about a water shortage. The problem however is that while there is theoretically enough water to go around, it’s not in the right place or in the right quantity. According to the UN, individuals need five liters of water a day to survive in moderate climates, and 50 liters for other needs, such as sanitation and cooking. And with the increased global demand for meat, dairy and fish, the demand for water has increased sixfold in the last fifty years. Yet there are still some one billion people without enough clean water to drink and two billion who do not have enough to clean, drink and eat.
Where does bottled water fit in? Increasingly companies are buying access to water wells and reservoirs and shipping it away at far greater cost than simply creating a distribution and filtration system. To start with, Food and Water Watch Has a list of ten reasons why tap water is better, including local money stays local, public agencies provide water to everyone rather than just those that can afford bottled water, there is more control over prices, if you’re unsatisfied you can vote to change it and there’s transparent decision making because of open meetings and open records, whereas corporations have no such requirements. Perhaps the most important reason though is that water stays local and affordable. Rather than take water away from where it’s needed and potentially strain the existent water supply, water remains available in a more sustainable fashion.
The projection that water is the next oil is a daunting prospect where corporations buy areas with abundant resources so that as demand increases they can increase profit margin at the expense of those who will no longer be able to afford water. This is especially disconcerting since the major three distributors of bottled water (Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Nestle) have spotted track records regarding business practices and the environment. Instead, Food and Water Watch advocates water being held in public trusts, so that it can be made available to all residents with sustainability in mind. Unlike oil, where for many people there is simply no option to stop buying, we can prevent water from becoming the next oil by using the water system that’s already in place.
The only problem is municipalities see the water system as a way to generate money.
My local city charges $2.30 per thousand gallons..or the $0.002 cents you quote..however sewer charges are based on your water usage and are $6.20 per thousand gallons of water used.
No one uses the same amount of sewer as they do water…you pay sewer charges even for water used for irrigation that never goes into the sewage system.
You can get an “Irrigation Meter” that doesn’t have sewage fees attached but you pay more for the water and pay $13 per month “meter charge” on top of that just as you do for your potable water meter plus sales tax, county utility tax, and “stormwater utility” fee. All on Two Meters.
I use only 2 or 3 thousand gallons a month and my bill is usually $49 dollars or more.
Oh! They also stick you with a 2 thousand gallon minimum.
They keep raising it up and people are going to start digging clandestine wells or finding ways to hook at least part of their homes up to wells already drilled for irrigation.
Great article. Bottled water is such a sham. Especially when you consider that the bottles sold by Coke are just tap water themselves.
Also, bottled water can actually be worse than tap water, at least in terms of contaminants. A lot of the regulations that apply to tap water — no e. Coli or coli form bacteria allowed, a certain level of filtration, tests for Cryptosporidium and Guardia, limits on levels of phthalate (a chemical that can leach from plastic bottles, among other things), and annual “right to know” reports — don’t apply to bottled water. It can be as simple as unfiltered tap water in a bottle — and costs fifty times as much! How, exactly, does this make sense?
Nalgene seriously needs to come out with a safe alternative to their old plastic, like, NOW. I miss my Nalgene and my do-it-yourself purified tapwater!
Claire – They have it! Nalgene has phased out Lexan in favor of Tritan, which is manufactured without BPA but otherwise has similar properties (shatterproof, no plastic taste/smell to the water, etc.). You can always go for a glass or aluminum bottle, too, which various other companies make, and old-fashioned squeeze bike bottles made of PETE plastic are BPA-free as well.
This is a great article over an issue that needs to be seriously considered by every individual. Big bottle companies are going to continue to push that their products are safer and better for you than regular tap water and that is just not the case. Change needs to take place on a personal level and spreading the word about the scam on bottled water is the first step. Spread the word!
Woah! Great piece! I know theres a movement on our Campus (Colby College) to get rid of bottled water. You just wrote the perfect piece to get people involved!
This is an important, too often ignored, issue that deserves our consideration. Bottled water is bad for more than just our wallets.
I really appreciate that attention is being brought to what is one of the crucial issues to Maine and even the whole world. It is sickening that the public has such minor influence on the fate of their resources. Even more so, it is frightening that these corporations can brainwash people into buying bottled water when they have perfectly clean regulated tap water in their own sink and feel happy about their decision. Great article.