http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=12751

Bottled water costs from 240 to 10,000 times as much as water straight from the tap. However, world consumption of bottled water more than doubled between 1997 and 2005. In the quest for cleaner water, bottled water has become all the rage. For the record, here is a fact- bottled water in developed countries such as Singapore could be scrutinised using lower standards compared to our tap water.

The cost of producing bottle water is expensive, both environmentally and economically. The plastic bottles, deposited in landfills after they have served their purpose, take a long time to decompose. The natural springs the water is derived from are pressured too, as the supply gets rapidly depleted due to excessive withdrawal for bottled water. Add that to the energy cost of producing the plastic, bottling, packaging, storing and shipping bottled water all over the world.

Polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, is normally what is used to bottle the water. It requires less energy to recycle and does not release chlorine into the atmosphere when burned. But recycling rates have declined. 23.1% of PET bottles were recycled in the USA in 2005, compared to 39.7% ten years before.

More public education perhaps will help increase recycling rates. But it is globalisation that has brought about the want of bottled water, for convenience, for cleanliness and for the social prestige involved in drinking bottle water.

Nathaniel