Bottled Water Facts
Bottled water has a more significant environmental impact than you might imagine; but there is an alternative.
In recent years, water has become a huge commodity in first-world countries; in fact, our yearly consumption of bottled water in the UK is over 3 billion litres and this figure is rising steadily. Drinks brands have convinced consumers that bottled water is somehow healthier and safer than tap water. Here in the UK, our tap water actually meets a higher number of regulatory standards than bottled water, technically making it the safer option. Combine that with a water filter to remove remaining impurities and you have a high-quality product in your very own kitchen. Bottled water is being sold as a lifestyle rather than a costly replacement for the water pumped into our homes, but not only is filtered water far cheaper, it’s also A LOT kinder to the environment.
How bottled water is damaging the planetSubstituting your bottled water for filtered water not only saves you money, but also helps to preserve the planet for your children and grandchildren. Here are a few of the ways our obsession with bottled water is destroying the environment.
Did you know that every bottle used to package water takes more than 450 years to bio-degrade? And if they’re not disposed of in landfills, the only other option is to incinerate them, something that releases toxic fumes into the air. You can’t even re-use those plastic water bottles, due to hygiene warnings and worries about safety, so recycling is your only other option. Except, only PET containers can be recycled and it’s estimated that a mere 1 in 4 plastic bottles actually make it to the recycling plant, with other 75% dumped in landfills sites or found littering our streets and beaches.
You’ve probably heard of food miles, where products and produce travel huge distances to reach you, resulting in a lot of carbon emissions. But have you ever considered that bottled water is guilty of the exact same crime against our planet?
22% of water sold in the UK is sourced from overseas regions, such as northern Europe, Fiji and the Himalayas. Even bottled water from the UK can travel over hundreds of miles before you get to drink it. Compare this to having fresh, pure filtered water, straight from your kitchen tap
By 2025, it’s predicted that 2 in 3 people across the globe will lack access to water.
Now think about the fact that it takes THREE TIMES the amount of water to produce one bottle of water than it does to fill it.
And that manufacturing water is then completely unusable because of the chemicals involved in producing the plastic bottle.
The UK alone currently uses 10 million barrels of oil each year just to produce water bottles. And that doesn’t even include the fuel required for transportation.
If you include the energy used to process, transport and of course, refrigerate bottled water, it actually amounts to over 10 million avoidable barrels of oil every year. That’s over 600 Olympic size swimming pools of oil, year after year and enough to fill 26 million cars with fuel and drive them 13 trillion miles
How filtered water can protect the environment
Replacing bottled water with filtered water straight from your kitchen tap goes a long way in lowering your carbon footprint and helping to protect the planet. It also costs you less than 2p per litre so not only do you save the planet, you also save money.
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