Bottled Water and Energy

Posted by the Pacific Institute

The growing consumption of bottled water raises questions about the product’s economic and environmental costs. Among the most significant concerns are the resources required to produce the plastic bottles and to deliver filled bottles to consumers, including both energy and water.

The Pacific Institute estimates that in 2006:

Producing the bottles for American consumption required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil, not including the energy for transportation;
Bottling water produced more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide;
It took 3 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water;

Total U.S. Consumption of Bottled Water in 2006

According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, Americans bought a total of 31.2 billion liters of water in 2006, sold in bottles ranging from the 8-ounce aquapods popular in school lunches to the multi-gallon bottles found in family refrigerators and office water coolers. Most of this water was sold in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, requiring nearly 900,000 tons of the plastic. PET is produced from fossil fuels – typically natural gas and petroleum.

To view more reasons why watershed restoration is a more sustainable way of managing resources than relying upon bottled water, please visit the website.