Chapter 15: Bottled Water

Student notes

Chapter 15 explores the rise of the bottled water industry over the last few decades in terms of its causes and consequences.The risk perception and political economy approaches are used to explain how bottled water use and its environmental consequences vary by location and level of affluence.

A Short History of Bottled Water

  1. Water has been bottled for storage for thousands of years, but marketing and sale of bottled water is a relatively recent phenomena.
  2. Most water has been seen around the world as a free common property resource. Initially, bottled water was a commodity only available to the wealthy. In the 1990s, consumption of bottled water rapidly began to increase around the world.

The current global state of the bottled water market

  1. Bottled water includes:
  2. spring water and artesian spring water from underground water resources
  3. mineral water that occurs naturally
  4. purified water, usually filtered municipal tap water
  5. fortified products that have included additional nutrient additives
  6. Use and sales of bottled water have increased dramatically around the world.

Environmental impacts of bottled water

  1. Despite the images of clean, environmentally friendly products, a life cycle analysis of a bottle of water shows that the industry has a number of negative impacts on the environment.
  2. petroleum is used for the bottles, the bottling process, and transportation
  3. few bottles are recycled, most end up in landfills or are not discarded properly

The puzzle of bottled water

  1. In industrialized countries, bottled water consumption is associated with health and wealth.
  2. In developing countries, bottled water is used to replace supplies that are becoming scarce, polluted, or privatized.
  3. Water has become increasingly expensive and privatized, despite its historically communal nature.

Population: Bottling for Scarcity?

  1. There is plenty of water on Earth, but it is not evenly distributed.Often the little freshwater that is available is polluted.
  2. There are also differences in how water is used.Industrialized countries use a higher percentage of available water per capita than less developed countries.
  3. Water consumption also depends on the existence of certain activities in a location, such as agriculture, industry, and domestic use.Much water consumption can be reduced by improving technology to make delivery and use more efficient, such as by fixing leaks.

Who drinks bottled water?

  1. The IPAT equation helps to explain why population pressure is not the only factor that drives bottled water consumption.
  2. Reasons for bottled water consumption vary from place to place, but can be characterized in terms of three types of scarcity:
  3. Hydrological scarcity, or lack of water for hydrological or climatological reasons (United Arab Emirates). Desalinization may be an alternative for affluent coastal regions to convert sea water to fresh water.
  4. Techno-economic scarcity, or lack of water from lack of infrastructure or treatment due to underdevelopment (Mexico).
  5. Perpetual scarcity, where water is perceived to be scarce or potentially hazardous even where there is widespread availability of potable water (Italy).

Risk: Health and Safety in a Bottle?

In affluent regions, bottled water consumption is often associated with perceptual scarcity.A risk assessment could determine whether bottled water is indeed safer than tap water, or if it is a matter of risk perception.Risk communication might be an option if municipal water utilities wish to convey information about the safety of tap water.

Risk assessment: is bottled water “healthy” or “less risky”?

  1. Since tap water varies in quality, it is hard to say.
  2. Bottled water as a replacement for soft drinks is a healthier trend.
  3. Since most bottled is repackaged tap water, there is no real difference in safety.
  4. In the U.S., municipal water is more regulated than bottled water in terms of safety standards and is therefore theoretically safer. However, some bottled water agencies voluntarily adopt public water safety standards.

Risk perception and the limits of risk communication in water quality

People tend to base assessment of water quality on taste, but many cannot tell the difference between municipal and bottled water.Even if a side-by-side taste test convinces people that their municipal water is not as unsafe or unpleasant-tasting as they thought, they may still continue to purchase bottled water.

Political Economy: Manufacturing Demand on an Enclosed Commons

Historically, water has been a common resource managed by municipal and national governments to ensure that people receive sufficient water service.

The rise of the water commodity

  1. The rise of the bottled water industry was simultaneous with increasing privatization of municipal water supplies.
  2. Under privatization, water becomes a commodity, or a thing to be sold for profit.

Bottled accumulation: Selling back nature

  1. Water is often appropriated from natural or public sources, then sold back to the community at a marked up price.This is an example of primitive accumulation.
  2. Appropriation of water resources is common in less developed countries.

Bottled overproduction: Producing demand

There are too many drink options because of overproduction, so companies must effectively create demand in order to sell their products.Demand is created through marketing and packaging and is targeted at affluent groups of people so that they will buy something that they could get for (almost) free.