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Bottled water sales down

8th November 2008

For the first time in two decades, the sales of bottled water are slowing

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The Beverage Marketing Corporation announced last week that bottled-water sales will rise by only 2.3 per cent this year – the slowest growth since 1991, and down from consistent double digits in the early 2000s.

“This is a very significant statistic,” says Richard Girard, water campaigner with the Polaris Institute in Ottawa.

The bottled-water industry blames the economic downturn and a cool summer – but Nestlé (one of the world’s top four bottled-water producers) states in an internal document that consumers are being affected by “perceived environmental issues.”

The packaging, shipping and distribution leave each bottle with a carbon footprint equivalent to filling it a quarter full with oil, according to the Pacific Institute in the U.S., which also calculated that Americans buy 29 billion plastic bottles of water a year, using 17 million barrels of oil. And yet 40 per cent of bottled water – sales of which increased by 25 times from 1976 to 2007 – is just tap water with extra filtration.

British market-research firm Mintel predicted this year that there would be a “backlash” against bottled water, which it said is now becoming “unfashionable” because of ecological concerns.

Cities worldwide – including London, New York and Paris – are actively trying to persuade citizens to turn back to municipal tap water. Other cities, such as Liverpool, have banned the purchase of bottled water with city funds (as the city pays for water purification anyhow).

Toronto may do so soon, and if it does, “it could be the biggest city to have such a far-reaching bottled-water legislation,” Mr. Girard says.

Published in The Green Report in The Globe and Mail

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• Tags:
• Bottled Water
• Energy
• The Way We Live
• Water

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