Bottled Drinking Water
The production, transportation and disposal of plastic water bottles cause serious environmental damage. As a result, Canadians are exploring more environmentally-friendly options, such as filling BPA-free plastic or stainless steel reusable bottles with tap water. Learn more about the negative impact of bottled water and take action to reduce bottled water consumption in your community. |
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- In Canada, per capita bottled water consumption grew 40% from 1999 to 2004. In 1999, each Canadian consumed approximately 24.4 litres of bottled water. By 2005, it had increased to about 60 litres per person, with sales worth $652.7 million.
- Bottled water ranks as the second-largest commercial beverage sold in the United States on a volume basis. In Canada, it now outpaces the consumption of each of these beverages: coffee, tea, apple juice and milk.
- In contrast to tap water, which is distributed through an energy-efficient infrastructure, transporting bottled water over long distances involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. Nearly a quarter of all bottled water crosses national borders to reach consumers, transported by boat, train, and truck.
- Fossil fuels are also used in the packaging of water. The most commonly used plastic for making water bottles is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is derived from crude oil. Worldwide, almost 2.5 billion kilograms of plastic are used to bottle water each year.
- Sales of PET (the plastic most commonly used in water bottles) have increased tremendously since 1990. Producing 1 kilogram of PET plastic requires 17.5 kilograms of water and results in air pollution emissions of over half a dozen significant pollutants. Much more water is consumed in making plastic bottles than will ever go into them!
- An estimated 88% of water bottles are not recycled in Canada. Canadians sent 65 million kilograms of PET beverage containers, many of them water bottles, to landfill or incineration in 2002. These bottles take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade and may leak toxic additives into the groundwater. Plastic bottles are becoming the fastest-growing form of municipal solid waste in the U.S. and Canada.
- Dasani bottled water (owned by Coca-Cola) is actually filtered municipal tap water, bottled in Brampton and Calgary. Aquafina bottled water (owned by PepsiCo) is also sourced from municipalities. Canadians have started asking: why pay for something that flows free from the tap?
- In Canada, tap water is more stringently tested than bottled water. Canadian tap water is also fluorinated, which is better for your teeth than its non-fluorinated bottled counterpart. A number of scientific studies have shown that bottled water is often less safe than tap water.
- The bottled water industry is the most unregulated resource industry in the U.S. and Canada. Often, corporations pay very little for the water they extract from the ground or the tap, and consumers pay 240 - 10,000 times more for bottled water than they would for tap water.
- Bottled water costs more than gasoline.
- Several Canadian (and American) cities have banned the sale of water bottles to various degrees, including Charlottetown, P.E.I., Nelson, BC, Waterloo Region, ON, St. John’s, NL and London, ON.
- Community resistance is not limited to North America; corporations that produce bottled water face public opposition from local citizen’s groups and governments around the world. For instance, in Plachimada in the state of Kerala, India, villagers have mobilized against Coca-Cola for depleting and polluting the local water source. In Sao Lourenco in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, citizens have rallied against Nestlé for illegally extracting and de-mineralizing water from the Primavera aquifer.
