Photo: FRED TANNEAU/AFP/Getty Images
Although it seems that drink bottled water is a common and harmless act, the truth is that this industry has managed to affect the environment and even global access to drinking water.
According to a new report from the United Nations University, the rapid growth of the bottled water industry it can undermine progress towards a key goal of sustainable development: clean water for all.
Based on an analysis of the literature and data from 109 countries, the report states that in just five decades bottled water has become “a major and essentially self-contained economic sector,” experiencing a growth of 73% between 2010 and 2020. And sales are expected to nearly double by 2030, going from $270,000 million dollars to $500,000 million.
Posted a few days before World Water Day (March 22), the report “The Global Bottled Water Industry: A Review of Impacts and Trends,” produced by the United Nations University’s Canada-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), highlights the damage this industry has caused.
The post concludes that the unrestrained expansion of the bottled water industry “is not strategically aligned with the goal of providing universal access to safe drinking water Or, at least, it slows global progress in this regard, distracting development efforts and redirecting attention towards a less reliable and affordable option for many, while still being highly profitable for producers.”
When the Sustainable Development Goals were agreed upon in 2015, he notes, experts elsewhere estimated that an annual investment of $114 billion was needed from 2015 to 2030 to reach a key goal: universal drinking water. According to the report, Providing drinking water to the nearly 2 billion people who lack it would require an annual investment of less than half of the $270 billion that are now spent each year on bottled water.
“This points to a global case of extreme social injustice, whereby billions of people around the world do not have access to reliable water services while others enjoy a luxury of water, says Kaveh Madani, new Director of UNU-INWEH.
Perceptions about bottled and tap water
The study cites surveys showing that bottled water is often perceived in the Global North as a healthier product and tasty than tap water, more of a luxury than a necessity. In the Global South, sales are driven by the lack or absence of reliable public water supplies and limited water supply infrastructure due to rapid urbanization.
In low- and middle-income countries, bottled water consumption is linked to poor tap water quality and to the unreliability of public water supply systems, problems often caused by corruption and chronic underinvestment in piped water infrastructure.
Beverage companies are adept at marketing bottled water as a safe alternative to tap water, drawing attention to isolated failures in public water supply systems, says Zeineb Bouhlel, UNU-INWEH researcher and lead author, and adds that “even if in some countries piped water is or may be of good quality, it is likely that restoring public confidence in tap water will require significant marketing and promotional efforts.”
Pollution
As for plastic pollution, the researchers cite estimates according to which the industry produced about 600 billion plastic bottles and containers in 2021which becomes about 25 million tons of PET waste -most of it unrecycled and destined for landfills-, a mass of plastic equivalent to the weight of 625,000 40-ton trucks, enough to form a bumper line from New York to Bangkok.
According to the report, the bottled water sector used 35% of the PET bottles produced in the world in 2019; 85% ends up in landfills or unregulated waste.
Keep reading:
• How is it possible that a city of 200,000 inhabitants in the US has run out of drinking water?
• Americans consume “cocktail of toxic substances” in tap water, according to new analysis
• Improve your health with these jugs to make alkaline water at home