Battered Bottled Water Industry Sees (Some) Green, While Filters Boom

I first wrote about the enormous environmental impact of the burgeoning single-use bottled water industry back in September 2003, and have been startled by how greens have gradually got on the bottle-bashing bandwagon. In 2003 I received plenty of support from readers who said they had no idea those convenient bottles contained water that was less regulated than most tap water, and that the products had such a big footprint. But I also received a slew of angry letters from people who thought I went too far in singling out one sector of the gigantic commercial food business. I was called anti-capitalist, anti-American and worse. It has been exciting to see how public awareness of the issue has mushroomed since then, and as I said back in 2003, there are larger issues that go beyond the bottle. It's great that more people seem to be more concerned with how their products are made, where they come from, and what the environmental issues are in balance. Bottled water seemed to me, and my editor Doug Moss at E/The Environmental Magazine, a good vehicle for looking at the vast inequalities that so define our world. While I estimate three out of every four pieces of litter tossed from cars on my street are bottled water containers (thanks, in large part, to the fact that they still lack deposits, due to intense industry lobbying), around a billion people around the world lack access to any clean water. While millions are suffering and dying, mostly children, from water-borne diseases, we are paying more for water by volume than we do for gasoline, shipped from far-flung locales like Fiji or New Zealand, wrapped up in pretty plastic packages. In 2003, only one in ten of those plastic bottles made it to the recyclers. Today, thanks to a surge of education efforts, that figure has inched up slightly, but it''s still only about one in five. And sales of the product have continued to go upwards. As the Los Angeles Times reports, more than 1.5 million barrels of petroleum go into the production of the 38 billion plastic water bottles Americans toss every year. Now, as the Times makes clear, major water bottlers are feeling the heat of public pressure, not the least because a number of governments are currently taking steps to restrict purchasing of their products for official use. Major players Coke and Pepsi (heard of them, right?) are making their bottles lighter, to cut down on fuel used for shipping, and are trying smaller labels and even recyclable caps. Meanwhile, sales of reusable bottles like Nalgene and Sigg are booming. Brita water filters and Nalgene have now teamed up to launch a FilterForGood campaign, aimed at convincing people to carry their own. They've enlisted Lazy Environmentalist Josh Dorfman as a spokesperson. I've pointed out in the past that Brita America continues to lag behind its European parent company, which offers ready recycling of used filters, in accordance with German law, instead of expecting consumers to toss those hazardous waste-containing items in landfills. Who will win the war for the bottle? It's definitely an interesting one to watch, and will likely spill over into other areas.

• NY Might Ban Plastic Water Bottles
• Pepsi Comes Clean: Bottled Water Is From The Tap
• Choose Filters Over Bottled Water
• Little Assurance On Bottled Water Purity

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