In 2013, 10,130.3 million gallons of bottled water were produced in the United States, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp.
Depending on who you ask, that’s either proof that more Americans are turning away from sugary soft drinks, or an environmental and ethical problem.
“Most communities have clean water,” says Alex Beauchamp of Food and Water Watch, a national organization dedicated to keeping “clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes.”
Beauchamp’s organization believes water is a public commodity, not a private one, and shouldn’t be privatized.
Christopher S. Hogan of the International Bottled Water Association argues that bottled water represents a “small and efficient” use of resources and a healthy alternative to sodas and sports drinks.
“We encourage people to drink water – public, filtered or tap,” he said, adding that “the water industry competes against sodas, fruit juices and energy drinks, which are a lot less healthy than water.”
But, according to the American Beverage Association, Dasani bottled water is manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company; Adirondack Spring Water is distributed by Adirondack Beverage Company, maker of various sodas; and Ethos Water is manufactured by the Pepsi-Cola Company, maker of Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Gatorade, to name a few of their brands.
So it would seem some bottled water manufacturers are competing with themselves.
“While I cannot speak for any of those companies (Coca-Cola, Adirondack or Pepsi) – and none of them happen to be members of IBWA – I think it’s reasonable to expect that they seek to have a solid foothold in all key areas of the beverage market,” Hogan said in an email. “I can say that bottled water as a product category primarily competes with other packaged drinks.
“Most people who drink bottled water also drink tap water, however, when you look at the gains bottled water has made, it often comes at the expense of soft drinks or other less-heathy packaged beverages.”
For residents of Kingston, Woodstock and the town of Ulster, this dilemma has been brought closer to home in recent months as town and city governments grapple with a Niagara Bottling company proposal to construct a 415,000-square-foot plant at the southwest corner of TechCity in the town of Ulster. Niagara hopes to bottle as many as 1.75 million gallons daily from Cooper Lake reservoir in Woodstock.
The reservoir is the source of water for the city of Kingston and parts of the town of Ulster.
Niagara, a California-based company, when fully operational, expects it would discharge up to 342,500 gallons of wastewater per day into the nearby Esopus Creek and another 2,500 gallons per day would be sent to the town of Ulster wastewater treatment plant.
Residents in Kingston, Ulster and Woodstock who oppose the proposal, and are led by KingstonCitizens.org, say the city can’t afford to give up the amount of water Niagara wants to use. Many maintain that publically owned water should not be sold to a profit-seeking company.
Opponents argue the truck traffic associated with the plant would have a negative impact on the area.
Food & Water Watch, claims on its website that bottled water not only wastes consumers’ money, but adds “tons of waste to the planet as well.” Bottled water’s detractors urge consumers to save their money and the environment by carrying their own bottles and filling them with water from their own municipal systems and wells.
While plastic water bottle production does require petroleum, PET plastic “is actually made from oil by-products – leftover after the production of oil products,” Hogan said.
He called opponents’ claims that the industry uses 17 million barrels of oil a year to make bottled water containers “disingenuous.” The IBWA website calls the figure “an interesting non-verifiable statement typically attributed to researchers at the University of Louisville. Except, according to the school, they have never even heard about it.”
The Food & Water Watch website counters that the bottled water industry used millions of barrels of oil “to produce and transport plastic water bottles in 2007 … Rather than being recycled, about 75 percent of the empty plastic bottles end up in our landfills, lakes, streams and oceans, where they may never fully decompose.”
Hogan concurs, adding that “people need to recycle more – all plastics, including beverage containers.” But he says consumers are recycling more and, between 2003 and 2012, the recycling rate rose by 38.04 percent.
The American Beverage Association’s website agrees with Hogan, stating that water containers “are among the most recycled consumer product packaging in the nation … and accounts for less than one third of one percent of all waste produced in the United States.”
Neither website sites sources for their conflicting claims.
But Hogan says the arguments raised by bottled water opponents are “more emotional” than legal or regulatory. “When I say something I have to back it up with facts and numbers … (opponents) don’t have to rely on facts as much as emotional impact.”
On its website, the Niagara bottling company touts its “Eco-Air Bottle,” claiming to have “reduced the amount of plastic … by over 60 percent.”
The company claims its “lightweight and recyclable” bottles allow it to transport more water per truckload, reduce CO2 emissions, “conserve valuable resources” and “use less energy to produce, which reduces our carbon footprint.”
Still, the company is seeking a permit to allow 260 trucks per day in and out of the proposed town of Ulster facility, and opponents – like KingstonCitizens.org – say those vehicles will pollute the area with diesel exhaust and create traffic congestion.
The International Bottled Water Association’s Hogan says the impact of trucking bottled water “pales in comparison to almost any other consumer good” and the industry is “very much leading the way to reduce packaging.”
But Food and Water Watch’s Beauchamp says “most Americans have clear tap water” that is “incredibly safe and clean … the reality is you don’t need to choose something in a bottle.”
That’s not always the case, Hogan says.
“Some tap water isn’t safe or reliable” and bottled water opponents’ arguments don’t “make sense if something happens to our tap water,” he says.
When municipal supplies are contaminated, as they are Washington, DC, Hogan says, bottled water is essential to public health. “People are told not to drink the water in our nation’s capitol,” he said.
The case against Niagara Bottling’s proposal is clear, Beauchamp maintains. “It will harm the public health. It will harm the environment.”
Making the surplus water currently available in Cooper Lake a commodity is “ridiculous,” he says, citing global warming and the possibility of local population growth and drought. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s a flawed concept. … Once you bottle it and send it out it’s gone from the watershed forever.”
Quoting Benjamin Franklin, he added, “When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.”
