bottled water

National Water Infrastructure Efforts Must Expand Access to Public Drinking Fountains

pgleick — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 15:52:27 +0000

National Water Infrastructure Efforts Must Expand Access to Public Drinking Fountains

Modern drinking fountains chill and filter water, and let users fill water bottles (Photo: Peter Gleick 2011)

by Peter Gleick and Rapichan Phurisamban

There is strong bipartisan support for expanding investment in the nation’s water infrastructure as part of a broader infrastructure effort. But there is, as yet, little agreement about what specific investments should be made. Here is one idea: expand access to high-quality and safe municipal water by improving access to drinking fountains in schools, parks, public buildings, and around public transit areas.

Drinking fountains are an important public resource, serving as an alternative to bottled water or sugary drinks and accommodating a wide array of users, including children, commuters, runners, the homeless, and tourists. Some fountains are even designed to provide water for pets. A newly released study from the Pacific Institute, entitled “Drinking Fountains and Public Health: Improving National Water Infrastructure to Rebuild Trust and Ensure Access,” discusses the state of the nation’s drinking fountains and addresses concerns about their quality and links to illnesses. The report concludes that the risk of fountain water contamination can be reduced or eliminated altogether through improved maintenance and cleaning or updating and replacing old water infrastructure and pipes.

The significance of drinking fountains has been documented since ancient times. Some of the earliest records of public water fountains come from ancient Greek cities, where fountains were both a common sight and a public necessity. A second century Greek writer, Pausanias, wrote that a place can never rightfully be called a “city” without water fountains. Spring-fed public water fountains were typically placed in or near temples and were dedicated to gods, goddesses, nymphs, and heroes.

Drinking Fountain, Florence, Italy (Photo: Peter Gleick)

As populations grew and cities expanded, demand for public water systems and new water treatment and delivery technologies led to the increased use of public water fountains. By the early 20^th century, public drinking fountains became a fixture of the urban landscape. In the past few decades, however, they have been disappearing from public spaces for several reasons, including the advent of commercial bottled water, decreased public investment in urban infrastructure, concern over the health risks of fountains and municipal water in general, and a laisse-faire attitude toward public water systems.

It is time to reverse this trend.

Drinking fountains are essential for maintaining free public access to water, and we need to expand the science and practice of ensuring they remain clean, safe, and accessible. A modest investment by public agencies, school and park districts, and even private businesses could greatly expand the number and quality of drinking water fountains. New fountain designs equipped with filters, chillers, and bottle fillers make fountains an even smarter choice for everyone. Mobile apps that make it easier to find a nearby drinking fountain are currently being tested and could improve access to drinking water, and thus public health.

Key recommendations from the Pacific Institute report should be adopted quickly, by federal, state, and local agencies, and by others who build and maintain drinking fountains. These recommendations include consistent cleaning and routine maintenance; installation of new fountains in high-traffic areas; retrofitting or replacement of old models with modern fountains with optional filters, chillers, and bottle fillers; and the elimination of parts and pipes that contain lead and copper.

Recent reports of unsafe water from fountains show that the problem is almost never the fountain itself, but old water distribution and plumbing systems that should, with a proper national water infrastructure effort, be upgraded and replaced immediately to remove lead and other sources of contamination. Uniform maintenance guidelines should be developed and widely adopted. These efforts, combined with communications on the results of regular water testing, reports on the performance of fountains, and information on how to find and access high-quality drinking fountains, can help build public trust in water fountains and protect the human right to water.

Drinking fountain, California (Photo: Peter Gleick)

pgleick Wed, 03/08/2017 - 10:52

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bottled water

human right to water

Water History

water resources

I would love more water fountains in parks. But what do we do about places with very cold winter weather where the water fountains are often turned off all winter to protect the pipes from freezing?

There is a great deal of technological innovation and drinking fountains these days have freeze-resistant or freeze-proof features. It's the cost that makes these fountains less attractive.

Breaking Water Taboos

pgleick — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 07:21:10 +0000

Breaking Water Taboos

(Photo: Peter Gleick 2008)

The recent severe drought in the Western United States -- and California in particular -- has shined a spotlight on a range of water-management practices that are outdated, unsustainable, or inappropriate for a modern 21^st century water system. Unless these bad practices are fixed, no amount of rain will be enough to set things right. Just as bad, talking about many of these bad practices has been taboo for fear of igniting even more water conflict, but the risks of water conflicts here and around the world are already on the rise and no strategy that can reduce those risks should be off the table.

For urban and agricultural water agencies, the Western drought has highlighted how unprepared the region is for growing pressures from population growth and climate change. Among the most egregious of old management practices are the long-term failure to monitor and measure all water uses, price water properly, and manage water rights laws and allocations in a fair and equitable way. For example, the days when we could build anything, anywhere, with no regard to water availability or efficiency of use, should be over. Yet there is still no serious discussion of reining in poor economic development practices or factoring in water availability with land-use planning.

Equally disastrous in California, as well as in places like northern China and large parts of India, has been systematic massive overdraft of groundwater. As studies have repeatedly shown, groundwater basins around the world are being depleted and as much as a third of global food production comes from unsustainable groundwater overdraft. California over-pumps approximately 2 billion cubic meters (more than 500 billion gallons) of groundwater in normal years and this has tripled during the drought. Modest new groundwater management legislation has been put in place in California, but it perpetuates this imbalance for decades to come; other regions around the world similarly grossly mismanaging groundwater.

The collapse of several vital ecosystems and fisheries populations also shows the growing tensions between human and environmental uses of water. The extinction of the Yangtze River dolphin, a decline in the UK populations of wetland and riverine birds like the bittern, and the growing threat of extinction in California of a wide range of major species, such as the Delta Smelt are clear indications of water mismanagement. Another key species in California, winter-run Chinook salmon, lost 95% of the entire 2014 generation when temperatures in the Sacramento River exceeded lethal levels. The chances are high and growing that within a decade California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea, will be an ecological disaster of staggering proportions, rivaling the destruction of the Aral Sea. And yet there has been little public discussion of these threats.

The private sector, too, has been struggling to figure out its role in a world of growing water shortages. As droughts have worsened, water bottling companies like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé are finding themselves under the microscope of public opinion for taking public water resources, packaging them for substantial profit, and then failing to adequately respond to public concerns about their local impacts, lack of transparency of data sharing, and their role in helping share the burdens imposed by water shortages and drought.

Companies with a big water footprint can, and should, actively engage in public discussions to help craft practical solutions to water problems. At a time when new global strategies and ideas are being developed for seriously improving corporate operational practices around resource management, disclosure, and the human right to water, the private sector must step up its game in real, transparent, and comprehensive ways. Until then, they shouldn’t be surprised if they continue to be a target for a worried and anxious public.

Similarly, the agricultural and livestock sectors are in the midst of a fundamental transition, whether they know it or not. The recent media focus on the amount of water that goes to grow almonds or raise cows is an example of both real public concern and the difficulties farmers will continue to face in explaining and justifying their water use. Ultimately there will be a reckoning about how much land farmers can irrigate in the arid western United States in the face of a changing climate and deteriorating ecosystem health. The answer is almost certainly less than is irrigated today. Yet almost no one is willing to discuss this. The good news is that innovation in water management, deployment of better water-using technologies, and a shift away from low-valued water-intensive crops to crops that produce more food or revenue per drop of water can help maintain a strong agricultural sector while reducing pressure on water resources.

There are still vast untapped opportunities in every water-using sector for improving water-use efficiency, widening use of high-quality recycled water, saving ecosystems, and recharging overdrafted aquifers. But until we challenge long-held beliefs, assumptions, and taboos, we will see more water conflict rather than progress toward a sustainable water future.

Peter Gleick

pgleick Mon, 10/26/2015 - 03:21

Well stated. It would also be a great help if we could get people to stop watering their lawns and using lawn chemicals.

On the back of an envelope: That glass of water in a restaurant?

pgleick — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 06:03:41 +0000

On the back of an envelope: That glass of water in a restaurant?

California, and much of the southwestern US, is in a severe drought. Again.

And as appropriate, there is growing debate about what we, as citizens, communities, corporations, and governments should do to tackle water shortages and the bigger question of sustainable water policy. Suggestions range from the large-scale and comprehensive (build more dams, transfer more water from farther and farther away, rethink the entire agricultural sector, use high-quality treated wastewater to meet certain needs) to the small-scale and local (replace your lawns and inefficient water-using fixtures, stop washing your car, turn off the water when brushing your teeth). All of these things are worth considering; plenty of them are worth implementing.

Recently, Don Cheadle (the great actor and producer, anti-genocide activist, and environmental ambassador) tweeted: “Tweeps, next time you’re at a restaurant please inform your waiter that you will ASK for water and not to automatically pour. #noautowater”

Mr. Cheadle’s tweet [I know society thinks using first names of famous people is ok, but I’m not going to presume…] produced a range of responses, including several from people who felt that this recommendation was a tiny and insubstantial gesture, or a “first world problem,” or didn't understand why this might help a water problem as severe as we’re experiencing.

Water in a restaurant. (Source: Photos Public Domain)

The Pacific Institute has done extensive and groundbreaking research over the past 25 years on a wide range of water, climate, energy, and environmental issues. A major focus of our work has been on how to use water more efficiently to do the things we want to do – a focus on “efficiency” and “productivity” – not deprivation. Our research has shown that we can save vast amounts of water in both agriculturaland urban settings without hurting our economy or lifestyle.

But behavior, information, cultural factors, and education also play a role in our water use. We could certainly have nice lawns while still using less water, but we could also get rid of our lawns and still have beautiful water-efficient gardens. We can have clean teeth and still turn off the water while we’re brushing.

All of these things help individuals and groups change behavior. Think about smoking: We made cigarettes expensive by taxing them to fund health and other programs, made public spaces off limits to second-hand smoke, and launched a massive public education campaign about the health dangers of smoking. These actions have been very effective at changing perceptions, preferences, and public behavior. Even those who still smoke now wouldn't think of lighting up in an airplane, school room, or restaurant.

In the water world, if our choices and decisions and behaviors change in the direction of lower-water-using options, so much the better.

This gets me back to Mr. Cheadle’s suggestion: how much water would such a suggestion actually save, and why bother? So, here is a “back-of-the-envelope” estimate (feel free to do your own, with your own assumptions):

Assumptions

Water saved?

The average American eats at a restaurant five time a week.
Water is automatically delivered to your table by the wait staff.
At the end of the meal, a half a glass of water (6 ounces) is left, undrunk.

But wait, all those glasses have to be washed as well:

Commercial dishwashers use a wide range of water, but average around 4 gallons of water per rack, and a rack holds around 20 glasses.

Water left on the table: [315 million Americans; 260 restaurant meals a year; 6 ounces left on the table per meal; 128 ounces per gallon = 3.8 billion gallons per year]

Water needed to wash those glasses: [315 million Americans; 260 glasses of water per year; 20 glasses per dishwasher rack; 4 gallons to wash each rack = 16.4 billion gallons per year]

Under these assumptions, the total amount of water that could be saved nationwide is around 20 billion gallons of water a year. To use the silly but ubiquitous standard measure: this amount of water would fill 31,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

These savings are real: This is water someone won’t have to pay for, the water utility won’t have to collect, treat, and pump to you, and the wastewater utility won’t have to collect, treat, and throw away. And there are energy and ultimately climate costs as well to get that highly treated potable water to you, to wash the dishes, and so on.

In context, it is true that far, far more water could be saved by improving irrigation efficiency in the farm sector, or getting rid of our lawns, or replacing inefficient washing machines. We should do those things too – it is not one or the other. But we must not ignore the power of even modest individual actions, the educational value of raising awareness of the value and scarcity of water, and the importance of exploring all the options available to us.

And don't get me started on bottled water in restaurants...

Peter Gleick

pgleick Wed, 04/09/2014 - 02:03

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The idea of not automatically providing water in restaurants is reasonable, both for real water savings and as a symbolic gesture, and I've seen it done in places suffering drought before. But is it really plausible that the average American eats at a sit-down restaurant with waiters five times a week? That would be an impossible budget-buster for most of us. I would guess that the typical American who eats out five days a week is having most of those meals at the sort of place where you carry your own prepaid, paper-wrapped food away from the counter in a tray, and only grudgingly do you get a cup for water instead of $oda.

But where is water provided automatically? In most places the waiter asks what you want for a drink and fetches it. I have not seen water served in 20 or more years that I can recall. Is this post just a bit late, as the restaurant industry long ago realized the savings. Water is not served in chains such as Chilis Olive Garden etc as an example.

Perhaps Mr. Cheadle (and/or Mr. Gleick) are unaware (or have forgotten) that sit-down restaurants that might automatically serve water are *not* something that the average American experiences on a regular basis. Most assume you will want tea, coffee, soft drink, beer or a mixed drink. They'd much rather serve you that for hefty profits than give you free water.

As others have mentioned, I can't remember the last time I was served water. It's no longer standard practice, except perhaps in fancy restaurants in Santa Monica, or the Bay area... :)

Glenn, sure, though what is the water content of the other drinks (or food) we order, but leave on the table at the end of a meal... There are lots of pieces to this bigger puzzle of cutting our water footprints.

#2, I wouldn't be surprised if auto-pouring water results in lower sales of alcohol, which is a major profit source for restaurants. If that's the case, there's good reason why restaurants don't already auto-pour.

Ridiculous assumptions as pointed out above. I'm upper middle class and I eat at a non-fast food restaurant on average 1 time per week. My wife and I leave virtually no water in the glass when we leave, lets assume though 2 oz each. A commercial dish washer can hold about 50 glasses per rack not 20. So that comes to a factor of 5x3x2.5 smaller water usage or about .5 billion gallons. A lot of water yes. What it should be compared to is total rainfall per year over the U.S. Perhaps someone would like to estimate the number of gallons of water that fall in the U.S. - or even just California (where my experience when I've visited is that they do ask).

So, as I said, everyone should feel free to do their own calculation with different assumptions. Envelope backs are cheap. That's not the point. (And comparing the result to total rainfall in the US is NOT an appropriate comparison BTW).

And most of the country is not experiencing drought conditions. Water is never "lost", it is all recycled. There are only opportunity costs in using it for one purpose or another.

Not pouring water indiscriminately in restaurants promotes mindfulness - which is a good thing in itself.

I live in an area where water is plentiful and you usually not only get water without asking at a nice restaurant, you get refills without asking. If I usually don't leave a full glass on the table, it's because I'm conscious of the waste and always ready to fling my hand over the glass when the waiter comes by with a pitcher.

Meanwhile, those glasses of water are recommended to be drank (and them some) by medical and health professionals alike. What figures might you come up with IF everyone drank every ounce of water that they "should" drink each and every day to be their healthiest.?
I always feel somewhat offended when someone reaches to be so conservative with something like a glass of water with a meal. Even considering the exponential of "each person".
To be conservative at this level is asking the tree to stop growing so many leaves as each leaf requires a bit of water. Certainly you cannot tell the tree such a thing lest you remove a branch or cut the whole tree down. And what about industry? Any idea how many billions of gallons of water industry uses on a DAILY basis for various things, much of it wasted. Do we really NEED golf courses with vast areas of lush greens and fairways that need TONS OF WATER?!? Sadly but simply, the answer is NO. When the price of water becomes the answer to drought conditions, and even before then, I will not be wastefull with water. However, to think that a glass of water at a restaurant is wasteful is ludicrous. It encourages us to drink our daily water allowance and could prevent one from choking on the often served bread before the meal.
Of course "Fine" restaurants wouldn't think of not bringing water because they can afford it and must stay classy, so for them its ok.
I guess my point is that the earth and weather does cycle with rainfall. It is a natural thing. Our population continues to grow as leaves populate a given tree. Cities and municipalities have factored irrigation control. Utilizing reservoirs (both natural and man made) and canal systems to store and supply from rainfall and snow melt runoff.
I will worry about a single glass of water when the answer to a drought is not a higher price for said water; when the beverage industry stops making a thousand different drinks all water-based that I don't need or buy; when car washes close and golf courses turn brown and when "Big Industry" stops using water in "acre feet" measurements rather than gallons to make something that is not a life necessity, then I will worry about human consumption of a single glass of water or portion thereof before or during my other human need...eating.

IMHO this is another case where the easy big gains are ignored while we are told to concentrate on the marginally beneficial gains. Savings on dispensation and washing of glasses barely registers on the scale of water uses. The reason we focus on these marginal benefits comes down to our unwillingness to step on the toes of wealthy and powerful interests. So we tip-toe around them and focus on on smaller feel-good changes.

If you want to make a difference you are going to have to step on the toes of very powerful interest groups. You could start with eliminating the watering of golf courses and lawns, limiting watering of crops to ground level, or below, drip irrigation, and running our sewer systems on gray water instead of drinking water.

If you want to make water at the table more beneficial I would suggest that we promote people actually drinking the water. Many Americans are marginally dehydrated and substituting plain water for other drinks is both healthier and more environmentally sound.

I suspect that you are also grossly overestimating the rate of restaurant use and how mush water is used per load by a commercial dish washing machine. I personally only eat out a couple of times a month and most of my neighbors seem to be about the same.

Based upon Feb, 2013 Energy Star standards the commercial washers use significantly less than one gallon per rack (GPR):

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=comm_dishwashers.pr_crit_comm_dis…

The value of small symbolic gestures of this kind is that they create "buy-in" for people who are otherwise uncommitted.

For example your neighbor doesn't care about climate change but buys a solar system to lower the electric bill. (Admittedly that's not a "small" gesture, but it illustrates the point.) After a few months, ta-daa!, your neighbor starts to care about climate change. Next thing you know, they're telecommuting two days a week and taking public transport two days a week, and only driving to work one day a week. Everything counts.

What works for energy also works for water, starting at the restaurant.

Something else you can do: Stick a 5-gallon pail under the shower nozzle while the water is warming up. Normally you lose 2 - 5 gallons as cold water down the drain before each shower. Catch it in a bucket and you can use it for toilet flushes. It's easy and buckets are cheap so it's almost free.

But what we desperately need is a state law that overrides homeowner association requirements for lawns.

You need some kind of liquid to wash a meal down, but that old line that you "need" so-and-so many glasses of water per day no matter what your size or activity level is not true, unless you're sweating a lot for some reason (and it turns out it's more dangerous to guzzle water while engaged in extreme activity than to skimp). Some of our needed water is gotten from food, and like other animals, we have a mechanism called thirst that exists to let us know when we need more. The idea that we "need" to drink much more than we actually want to is fundamentally disempowering and makes no sense - look at all of us who do not regularly choke down eight glasses of water a day or whatever and do not shrivel up like raisins.

I really think the danger is not on the side of the classic eight glasses of water a day side. The biggest danger of water over-consumption seems to be hyponatremia, literally over dilution of the bodies electrolytes. Hard to get to that drinking just eight eight ounce glasses of water. Typical cases of hyponatremia are the result of gallons of water.

From what I've heard the larger danger is dehydration. Dehydration is a frequent issue, or contributing condition, with emergency departments the young, old, and already sick, fall behind in their intake of water and the entire system is thrown for a loop. Not a few elderly people back off their intake of liquids because they are incontinent. Bladder infections, obstructed bowels, weakness and impaired thinking are common with even moderate dehydration. I had a relative end up in the hospital with a severe bladder infection and resulting complications to their existing conditions.

And then again I'm down in Florida, don't like, or use air conditioning, work outdoors and commonly consume over a gallon of water, twice your eight glasses, in a single eight hour period. People who work hard and don't drink fall out.
Last year we had two people suffer heat prostration. Typical tough guys too manly to drink water or moderate their pace.

Yes, if you work hard and sweat a lot you need to drink water to replace it. But you don't necessarily need to replace every drop while you're doing the work. Runners were instructed for decades that if they didn't drink lots of water during races they could drop dead of dehydration. It's recently been acknowledged that this is vanishingly rare and that people much more often collapse from drinking too much water during races, as the kidneys don't process it efficiently when one is engaged in heavy exercise. It's probably less dangerous to be a little dehydrated for a few hours than to be waterlogged. (And of course, most healthy people with indoor jobs are at no significant risk of suffering illness either way.)

Should you drink tap water or bottled water?

gregladen — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:46:39 +0000

Should you drink tap water or bottled water?

This is the time of year, spring, when a lot of people switch to drinking bottled water instead of tap water. They do this because in their particular area the tap water seems to "go bad" ... usually it is a mild smell or a slightly icky taste. This makes people fear their tap water, so they go to the store and buy bottled water. What has happened in many cases is that the local municipal water supply has done everything it can reasonably do to clean up and make nice the water that comes out of your tap, but there is this slight taste or smell because in the spring, that is what water does in many of our sources, including wells, rivers, and reservoirs. It depends on where you live, and it probably depends on the year as well.

Your municipal water is safe. Tap water always has "stuff" in it that is not H2O, but in the spring, some of that stuff is a bit more detectable than at other times of the year.

People are making two mistakes. 1) Not drinking the tap water because they think it is bad for them. It may be unpleasant, and that may be a reason to not drink it, but it is not bad for you. And, 2) quitting tap water forever, switching to bottled water because they think their water has gone bad forever. Or they just get used to the bottled water and stick with it.

Peter Gleick has a lot of information about Bottled Water, some of which is on his new blog. The total amount of Carbon you are releasing into the atmosphere by drinking a liter of bottled water is something like an order of magnitude greater than for tap water, for example. You just shouldn't be using bottled water if you have a run of the mill municipal water supply.

Speaking of water, Skeptically Speaking just did a show on the topic:

Drinking Water

This week, we’re looking at the science and the history of the water that makes life and society possible. We’ll speak to law and environment professor James Salzman, about his book Drinking Water: A History. And we’re joined by Juewen Liu, chemistry professor at the University of Waterloo, to talk about his work using DNA to detect water-borne impurities that could make water unsafe.

Click here to get the podcast.

___________________
Photo Credit: Lightsurgery via Compfight cc

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Bottled Water Tax

pgleick — Thu, 09 May 2013 12:58:12 +0000

Bottled Water Tax

Municipalities are trying to find ways of dealing with the scourge of plastic bottles in their garbage, and with falling revenues from many sources. Plastic bottles have become a significant fraction of total garbage volume, and raise collection, handling, and landfill costs when they are not recycled. In 2011, according to NAPCOR (the National Association for PET Container Resources) 5.5 billion pounds of PET plastic bottles were available for recycling, but most of those bottles were not recycled.

One answer: impose a tax on bottled water.

Fewer than 1 in 3 of all PET bottles are recycled, though most could be. [The bottled water industry claims that a higher percentage of water bottles are recycled (still under 39%), but there is no way to independently verify those data or the methods used to determine them. I asked NAPCOR for their analysis and report on plastic-water-bottle recycling, but they replied “We don't release the adjunct report to the public” since it was prepared for the bottled water industry.] Even so, accepting the optimistic estimate still means that billions and billions of plastic water bottles are sold and thrown away into garbage every year.

More and more municipalities are considering specialty taxes for problematic goods. We’ve long had special taxes on tobacco and alcohol and other dangerous, luxury, or non-essential items, and the funds raised by these taxes sometimes generate revenue used to educate consumers about healthier alternatives. In particular, such taxes can be legal and effective ways of trying to recover some of the additional damages and expenses imposed on cities by bottled water consumption, waste collection, and landfilling. The town of Concord, Massachusetts even banned single bottle sales of bottled water, though most towns don’t go this far.

Opposition to such taxes from the industries targeted can be fierce. Lobbyists, money, and political pressure pour in whenever they are proposed. As one might expect, the bottled water industry lobby group (the International Bottled Water Association), formally opposes taxes on bottled water: “IBWA opposes all taxes, surcharges, fees, and levies specifically targeted against bottled water.” [I expect to see comments on this blog post from them, below.] Part of their argument is that it would reduce the amount of bottled water sold, and thus be a smaller part of city revenues than original expected. This first effect is, of course, precisely the point of imposing selective “sin” taxes on goods and services we might want to limit, or to recover the costs of the damages imposed on society by those goods and services.

Perhaps the best example is the City of Chicago Bottled Water Tax. As of January 1, 2008 the City enacted a tax of $0.05 per bottle of water, defined as “all water which is sealed in bottles offered for sale for human consumption. The term does not include any beverage defined as a 'soft drink' under Section 3-45-020 of the Chicago Soft Drink Tax Ordinance, Chapter 3-45 of this Code." (Chicago does have other taxes that apply to some soft-drink sales.)

In the first five years of this tax (during which time the bottled water industry sued unsuccessfully in an attempt to declare the tax invalid), the City of Chicago raised over $38 million dollars on the sales of 763 million bottles of water (see Figure 1, based on data provided to me by the Chicago Department of Finance).

Revenue from Chicago's Bottled Water Tax from 2008 to 2012. Source: Chicago Department of Finance.
Prepared by Peter Gleick (2013).

This seems like a successful experiment. Other cities might consider something similar.

[Peter Gleick is author of “Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water” published in 2010 by Island Press, Washington DC, available from Amazon or Island Press or your local bookstore.]

pgleick Thu, 05/09/2013 - 08:58

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Bottled Water Sales: The Shocking Reality

pgleick — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:05:55 +0000

Bottled Water Sales: The Shocking Reality

The numbers are in for 2012, and they are shocking. The Beverage Marketing Corporation, which tracks sales and consumption of beverages, is reporting that sales of bottled water grew nearly 7 percent between 2011 and 2012, with consumption reaching a staggering 30.8 gallons per person. And since I (and some of you) consume almost zero bottled water every year, there are people out there drinking far more than the average.

Thirty-six years ago, this industry didn’t exist. Americans drank fewer than two gallons of bottled water per year, and almost all of that was in the form of water from big office coolers. Figure 1 shows the dramatic exponential growth in bottled water sales over this period. There was a slight downturn in 2008 and 2009, attributed in part to a growing public campaign against bottled water and in part to the severe recession, but sales have resumed their upward climb as companies cut the price of bottles and launched an even more aggressive media and advertising blitz.

Bottled water sales per person in the United States, from 1976 to 2012. Data are from the Beverage Marketing Corporation. Graph by Peter Gleick.

Despite having one of the best municipal tap water systems in the world, American consumers are flocking to commercial bottled water, which costs thousands of times more per gallon. Why? Four reasons:

First, we have been bombarded with advertisements that claim that our tap water is unsafe, or that bottled water is safer, healthier, and more hip, often with celebrity endorsements. (Thanks a lot, Jennifer.)
Second, public drinking water fountains have become increasingly hard to find. And the ones that exist are not being adequately maintained by our communities.
Third, people are increasingly fearful of our tap water, hearing stories about contamination, new chemicals that our treatment systems aren’t designed to remove, or occasional failures of infrastructure that isn’t being adequately maintained or improved.
Fourth, some people don’t like the taste of their tap water, or think they don’t.

Some people, including the bottled water industry, argue that drinking bottled water is better than drinking soft drinks. I agree. But that’s not what’s happening. The vast increase in bottled water sales have largely come at the expense of tap water, not soft drinks. And even if we pushed (as we should) to replace carbonated soft drinks with water, it should be tap water, not expensive bottled water.

This industry has very successfully turned a public resource into a private commodity. Sales of bottled water now are close to $12 billion a year, and in fact, total expenditures are far larger if you include the cost to consumers. (The sale figures don’t include retail mark-up or total consumer expenditures, I believe.)

But the true costs are even higher. 60 to 70% of all the plastic bottles sold – billions and billions of them – are never recycled, but end up in our garbage. The Pacific Institute has calculated that the equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil are used to make the plastic in these bottles each year (here is a link to a .pdf of the peer-reviewed scientific paper), not including the additional energy required to drive the bottles around, power the refrigerators that cool them, or deal with the wastes. Some local groundwater depletion also occurs around big bottled water plants, raising concern in local communities in Maine, Michigan, California, Florida, and elsewhere.

We need action on this, including:

Efforts to upgrade and improve our tap water systems. Overall the U.S. has a great system; but it could and should be even better, with new technology to remove new contaminants, improvements to old pipe and distribution systems, better monitoring, and special assistance in rural areas dependent on vulnerable groundwater wells.

Education to consumers about the quality of our tap water, and the true environmental and economic costs of bottled water.

Better comprehensive independent monitoring and enforcement (and strengthening) of bottled water standards, which are not the same as tap water standards, and not as strong in several areas.

Better labeling of bottled water, to provide information on quality, the water source, and the elimination of misleading names and descriptions.

More aggressive and comprehensive plastic recycling: states with stronger recycling laws collect and recycle more plastic. And all bottlers should be required to use some fraction of recycled plastic content.

Improvements in access to drinking water fountains. The Pacific Institute has a beta-version of an Android app (free) that maps water fountains (www.wetap.org) using an open-access database, but this is just a first step to what is needed – a comprehensive dataset of all public water fountains, the ability of any member of the public to add information on fountains (working/broken? clean/dirty?), and pressure to build new fountains where they don’t exist.

And finally, take individual actions: start carrying around a reusable, refillable bottle, if you can’t go from point A to point B without water. Support improvements in your tap water system. Demand better labeling and transparent information from bottled water companies. You’ll save money, reduce your environmental footprint, and help drive sales of bottled water back down.

pgleick Thu, 04/25/2013 - 05:05

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I have to say that I occasionally buy and drink bottled water in a few situations:

1) Past airport security, where it is really the only water available. You can't bring it in. That's true of some other secured venues, too.

2) Poor planning, i.e. I forgot to bring my glass bottle.

If I do buy bottled water, I'll try to reuse the bottle for the rest of the day by refilling it at a fountain or tap. I'm glad it exists, but it's idiotic that we use it as much as we do. Really, it is so much cheaper to use a refillable bottle.

Isn't this really about lowering the use of oil in developed nations so that there is less demand and hence, lowers the price of it so that developing nations can develop faster?

Market data shows that the growth in bottled water has come directly from sales of soft drinks and other packaged beverages. This comparison to tap is a straw man. By the way, the most damaging attacks on municipal water supplies is from the Environmental Working Group. I've yet to see a bottled water ad that says anything negative about tap water. Certainly not from any of the major brands.

Thanks for the comment. In fact, market data show that the growth in bottled water has NOT come from sales of other packaged beverages only, but largely from a decrease in tap water consumption. This is a key point. And I've seen plenty of attacks on tap water from bottled water ads, though you are correct that the "major" brands try to be less direct and more responsible in this area.

You can bring an empty reusable bottle past US airport security, and fill it from a public fountain on the other side.

I'd be interested to see a comparison between environmental effect of commercial beverages - soft drink vs water etc. The rare occasions when I buy bottled water it's because I've forgotten my water bottle and don't want to drink the other options.

Isn't the real waste using drinking water for non - drinking such as gardening, bathing, and cleaning?

I wonder if there are stats on how much drinkable water is actually used for drinking.

Peter, there is no profit to be made in touting the purity of tap water. There is lots of profit to be made in making people think tap water is unsafe and bottled water (which is just tap water) is much safer. Americans are far too stupid and incurious to even understand where their tap water comes from. On the upside, cholera epidemics are down.

Actually, there is a far easier solution to this problem. Ban them.

That's probably an anathema to the freedom loving, market drive, "I can destroy the world and no-one can stop me" mentality of most Americans. But we ban lots of environmentally harmful products (take DDT for example), why is this any different?

I know for sure that I am one who is driving up that average. I will typically drink about a gallon of water from our cooler while at the office, which equates to 250 gals/year. I think another factor that isn't mentioned here is that water intake is beneficial to weight loss and metabolism, which may lead people to increase intake of water?

Growth in bottled water sales is indeed from people switching from sugary drinks to bottled water. This is according to BMC. Bans have unintended consequences. Watch what happens to Norman when his town banned bottled water: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmGhFn7bkEY

I guess I'm going to have to do a blog post on these data and their misinterpretation. Big increase in bottled water, small drop in soda, big drop in tap water.

Peter,

You say " Some people, including the bottled water industry, argue that drinking bottled water is better than drinking soft drinks. I agree."

I'd always thought that soft drinks were 'better' because they tend to be bottled at locations closer to the end consumer. The carbon footprint due to transporation of this incredibly heavy substance (flavored water) is therefore lower than the footprint of 'spring/mineral water' that can be shipped from anywhere - even overseas.

And the water in that locally-bottled soft drink is more likely to find it's way back to it's original source, or at least one close to that original source.

All good things. Why do you prefer bottled water over soft drinks? I'm sure you have some reasons I haven't considered.

On a side note, the numbers are disturbing. Even at the climate rally in D.C. last February, I saw far, far too much bottled water. I think if people just became aware of the problem, they'd modify their behavior measureably.

Drop in tap water? I can't find that on EPA's website. What is your source?

I am a big advocate for carrying a refillable water bottle. I use a Brita system and love drinking water, far more than soft drinks or coffee.
Thanks for all the info.

For goodness' sake, use real units. This is supposed to be a science blog.

What units bother you? Gallons per person per year? Do you prefer liters per person per year? Cubic meters per second? Ounces per millennia? Per day?

Or do you object to "barrels of oil equivalent"? The original paper (linked in the blog post) uses megajoules and other metric energy units.

I presume you can do unit conversions: but send another comment and I'd be happy to help.

Using non-metric units in a scientific (or, generally, serious) context is the metrological equivalent of creationism. I knew of an engineering professor whose stance on imperial units was "If you want to quote speeds in furlongs per fortnight, you are free to do so, but don't expect anyone else to take you seriously."

Even the British think that measuring fluids in ounces and gallons is silly, and we invented that awful system.

"Using non-metric units in a scientific (or, generally, serious) context is the metrological equivalent of creationism."

Wow Gavin - that's some industrial-strength hyperbole there. The units themselves are real, if deprecated, and the thing they measure is real.

We too have the same situation in Sri Lanka. The bottled water companies spread the message that their product is superior to tap water. The number of people who trust and depend on bottled was has increased over the last years. It is sad, as the bottled water companies use natural water resources that truly belong to all people in order to make money. They harvest ground water, which is really to be kept for the next generations. The only thing they give back to the people is huge number of empty plastic bottles that fill our dump sites. If they harvest rain water for this purpose, its a different issue, but they use the water that naturally fall free of charge to provide water for all animal and plant life. They use "the fear" in the minds of people to earn money.

Happy Water, er, Earth Day: Give up Bottled Water

pgleick — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 07:08:45 +0000

Happy Water, er, Earth Day: Give up Bottled Water

We live on solid ground, but the truth is, our planet is mostly covered in water. The famous writer Arthur C. Clarke noted this when he said, “How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.”

Today is Earth Day, when we celebrate the planet, and in particular the functioning ecosystem that supports all life, including our own. In recognition of Earth Day, here is a short piece about bottled water in the United States and most developed countries, with some basic facts that should help any readers still in doubt about the downsides of that industry.

The Money

Bottled water, served in single-serve plastic (PET) bottles, is staggeringly expensive. You don’t think about it when you only pay a couple of dollars for each little bottle, but over time, and compared to our high-quality tap water, bottled water is a couple of thousand times more expensive. Here’s a graph:

The typical cost of bottled water versus tap water. (Source: P.Gleick 2013)

The Quality

There is no reason to believe that bottled water quality is any better than tap water quality despite the advertising hype and public perception. The laws that protect water quality for both are similar (but not identical – some bottled water regulations are weaker than tap water regulations). But enforcement and monitoring is far less consistent, less independent, and weaker for bottled water (partly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration as a food product) than tap water (regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency). Here is a list of over 100 bottled water “recalls” for contamination (pdf), and it is likely that many others have never been discovered or publicized. My favorite was the recall due to contamination with “crickets.” Really.

The Environmental Impact

The environmental impacts of bottled water are largely foisted on the public and our ecosystems in the form of large amounts of energy to produce the plastic and large amounts of plastic thrown away into our environment. It takes the equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil every year to make the PET water bottles we consume in the United States, and even more energy to move it, store it, and chill it (the IBWA pretends this is a “myth” but here is the link to the scientific paper (pdf) that discusses the massive energy requirement of bottled water). Most PET bottles are not recycled; most (more than 60%) are dumped in landfills or by the side of the roads.

Around 45% of all bottled water comes from local groundwater sources (sometimes labeled as “spring” water). In some regions, these aquifers have been overpumped, with adverse consequences for local wells and streams.

But the rest (around 55%) of all bottled water is simply taken from local municipal tap water systems. Sometimes it receives additional processing, but that tap water originally met all federal water quality standards, and cost a tiny fraction of what the bottled water industry subsequently charges for turning a public resource into a private commodity.

So, one thing you can do for the Earth today and every day? Cut back on your purchases of bottled water. Start to carry a refillable bottle around if you feel the need to rehydrate during the day. More and more drinking water fountains are being designed to fill bottles. Here is a new "GlobalTap" fountain at the San Francisco Airport.

GlobalTap Fountain at the San Francisco Airport. (Source: P.Gleick 2013)

And to help you find public drinking water? Here is an Android app (WeTap) that lets you find nearby drinking water fountains or add new ones to a global, open source database. Information on WeTap is here.

Far more information on the history, science, and consequences of bottled water can be found in the book “Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind our Obsession with Bottled Water” (Island Press, Washington DC).

pgleick Mon, 04/22/2013 - 03:08

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