Petrol is cheap
By | Oct 9, 2008
Bottled water is more expensive that petrol. Isn’t that weird?
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awojtas
October 5th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
“It struck me…that all you had to do is take the water out of the ground and then sell it for more than the price of wine, milk or for that matter, oil.”
- Gustave Levin, past chairman of Perrier
“We sell water…so we need to be clever.”
- Jeffery Caso, former Vice-President of Nestlé
The World Bank has predicted that the wars of tomorrow will be fought over water.
Less than 20% of plastic water bottles are recycled.
Some bottlers take water in large volumes from springs and aquifers, which can dry up wells, deplete wetlands and drain rivers.
Making the plastic bottles for bottled water for sale in the U.S. required the equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil last year and generated 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.
To visualize the entire energy costs of the lifecycle of bottled water, imagine filling each bottle with a quarter of oil.
[Don't know how factually accurate that is? But it's not a nice thought...]
Personally, after researching and a bit of copy/paste of this stuff above, I have decided I will try to not use bottled water unless it’s the same bottle each time, filled with tap water! I’m really put off bottled water!
Stink for places like Fiji where you have to drink bottled water… for our weak western stomachs :P
[1] Source for statistics: http://www.responsiblepurchasing.org
Anne
October 6th, 2008 at 10:40 am
I’ve read that statistic about filling a water 1/4 full of oil at http://www.pacinst.org/topics/water_and_sustainability/bottled_water/bottled_water_and_energy.pdf .
This document also estimates that twice as much water is used in the production of each bottle of water as the final product, so that each litre of bottled water we buy represents the consumption of 3 litres of water!
Aidan
October 12th, 2008 at 11:34 am
I was across the ditch this week and I noticed a common practise to sell bottled water for $1 with any purchase at cafe’s.
I liked the price, but I’m sure the cheaper price encourages bottled water consumption. For something so convenient, that people would generally only see as a good thing (”Drink 6 glasses of water a day, dear!”), it seems almost impossible to turn bottled water consumption around.
Like jeans - the “coca-cola of clothing”.
• 1/3kg of pesticide used per pair
• 20,000 deaths each year from pesticide poisoning in cotton production (WHO estimate)
• 17% of cotton worldwide is used to produce jeans
• People will always want to buy jeans, like bottled water…
The good news? Retail sales of organic cotton increased 238 percent between 2005 and 2007. Brands such as Nudie Jeans are growing dramatically (70% revenue growth 2004). Awareness of “raw” or “organic jeans” is improving.
Can a similar change be instigated in bottled water? Sell “raw water”, in environmentally friendly bottles?
[1] Further reading: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/03/denim
Anne
October 13th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Cool that organic cotton sales are up. Hopefully people are buying organic instead of, rather than as well as, conventional cotton. Organic stuff is a bit of a status symbol these days after all…
I wonder where the bulk of organic cotton is grown? My hunch would be that a lot of it is still concentrated around central Asian countries like Uzbekistan, which is a pretty terrible place to grow cotton because of limited water resources.
Cotton is extremely water intensive, and is causing desertification, salinisation and the shrinking of the Aral Sea, with all the attendant health and economic problems that’s brought. So while organic cotton is better, less cotton is best!
One of my new year’s resolutions was to buy most of my clothes from op-shops. It’s so much fun, saves heaps of money and you find clothes no-one else has.I’ve also found clothes swaps a sweet way to revamp my friend’s and my wardrobes. We’re organising one in a few weeks - what could be better than a spring clean of stuff you don’t wear any more, dessert, good company and free clothes!
Too bad it’s not so easy to get boys excited about clothes swaps. Some of you guys should find a way to market it to the lads!!!
Anne
October 13th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
And yeah, I remember buying lunch in Australia in one of the places with the bottle of water as part of the lunch deal. I don’t think they had even listed the price of the pita pocket without the water thrown in, and looked at me kinda strange when I turned down the 50c bottle of water.
Ant
October 15th, 2008 at 2:05 am
In Manila 500mls of bottled water (and you do not want to drink it out of a tap!) is about 16 pesos. That’s about 50 NZ cents. And of course there’s still a huge profit margin.
In Fiji, another blighted by enormous poverty, you’ll find that one of its growth industries is selling its bottled mineral water to the USA - and the market, and the profit, is huge.
I just wonder what interesting ideas people have for subverting. I’m not sure we will ‘always want it’….there was a time when we didn’t want it…is it really true that now we have tasted the sweet waters of the bottle, there is no going back?