Dirty Secret about the carbon footprint of bottled water

There’s been tons of attention to single use plastic and pollution lately which is great. But something that is not mentioned as often is the carbon footprint of bottled water.

“I have a secret to tell you.”, said the former Coca Cola executive. “You think plastic pollution is bad but the biggest problem with plastic is the carbon footprint from raw materials, production and transportation of plastic.”

The conversation continued and we concluded that the plastic waste can be managed but the CO2 will not go away no matter how much we recycle.

How bad can it be I wondered?

Searching online I found that many of the carbon footprint studies of plastic referred to had been commissioned by the bottled water industry. The more recent independent studies were buried below press releases* by the international bottled water association talking about 30% reduction in material use.

Rather than just picking the worst or average of these numbers I decided to dig deeper. Based on many weeks of research the findings turned into a long blog as a resource for people to make up their own mind about how bad it is. Here’s a summary of our research.

Carbon Footprint of Bottled Water Overview

This excludes the transportation of international brands and cooling of water. Read the full research including sources and references on https://tappwater.co/us/carbon-footprint-bottled-water/

What does it mean?

0.54% of total CO2 emissions per year might not sound that much in relative terms but the carbon footprint for the entire aviation industry was about 1.7% in 2017. While it’s difficult to replace flying with more sustainable transportation alternatives for long distances,something other than not flying bottled water can simply be replaced by tap water or filtered tap water.

And most of these studies don’t take into account the end of life of plastic. In countries like Sweden that claim to “recycle” 99% of all plastic more than 50% is burned for energy. According to the EPA, quoted in Slate, this releases puts out more CO2 per megawatt generated than burning coal.

Is there a solution?

More plastic and recycling is not the solution. Even bottles made out of 100% recycled plastic only reduce the CO2 footprint by about 20–30%.

But there is a better alternative.

We have to change behaviour for good and refuse, reuse and reduce the use of single use plastic materials. And this does not mean replacing plastic with other single use packaging made of paper, glass, cloth or hemp. Instead we must give up bottled water and other unnecessary bottled beverages for tap water, filtered tap water and flavoured drinks that we can easily prepare at home.

Simply put, drink tap water!

Like this article and follow me for more in-depth research about bottled water and it’s alternatives.

Disclaimer:

I’m a Co-founder of TAPP Water with a mission to provide easy and affordable solutions for clean and environmentally friendly tap water.

*Examples of studies by the bottled water industry:

https://www.bottledwater.org/education/environmental-impact/environmental-footprint
https://www.alpla.com/en/pressrelease/2017/08/study-confirms-excellent-carbon-footprint-recycled-pet