Professional Documents
Culture Documents
- The average American is now drinking around 30 gallons, or 115 liters, of bottled water each
year, most of it from single-serving plastic containers. (3)
- How do you convince consumers to buy something that is essentially the same as a far cheaper
and more easily accessible alternative? You promote perceived advantages of your product, and
you emphasize the flaws in your competitor's product. For water bottlers this means selling
safety, style, and convenience, and playing on consumer's fears. Fear is an effective tool.
Especially fear of sickness and of invisible contamination. If we can be made to fear our tap
water, the market for bottled water skyrockets. (3)
-"Tap water is poison!" declares another flyer my neighbor Roy received in the mail in early
2007 touting the stock of Royal Spring Water Inc., a Texas bottled water company. "Americans
no longer trust their tap water. . . . Clearly, people are more worried than ever about what comes
out of their taps." (3)
1. Steinmetz, Katy. "San Francisco May Be First Major City to Ban Plastic Water Bottles. 17
Dec 2013. Time. 8 Sept. 2014. <http://nation.time.com/2013/12/17/san-francisco-may-be-firstmajor-city-to-ban-plastic-water-bottles/>.
2. "Bottled Water Is Wasteful". 8 Sept. 2014.
<http://thewaterproject.org/bottled_water_wasteful>
3. Gleick, Peter. "War On Tap: America's Obsession With Bottled Water. NPR. 8 Sept
2014.<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126833795>.
- In 2009 in the US we spent 10.6 billion dollars on bottled water over 1000 times the cost of tap
water.
- Most bottled water is actually tap water just bottled.
- Tap water in the US has to go through more safety regulations than bottled water does.
Government agencies even allow the test results from the tap water to be available to the public.
Even though bottled water is supposed to be more pure, a test was conducted in 2008 on 10
different brands of bottled water. The test reviled over 38 contaminants in the water.
- It is estimated that 25% of bottled water is just tap water in a bottle but it still costs more than
tap water.
- About 22 percent of the brands we tested contained, in at least one sample, chemical
contaminants at levels above strict state health limits. If consumed over a long period of time,
some of these contaminants could cause cancer or other health problems. (2)
- Of all the bottles we use only 13% actually get recycled. In 2005 around 2 million tons of
plastic bottles ended up in landfills instead of being recycled.
- National Geographic estimates that 17 million gallons of crude oil is used on an annual basis
to produce plastic bottles. (3)
- If you fill a water bottle of the way with oil, this is about how much oil is used to
manufacture that one bottle. (3)
- According to MSNBC, the use of water bottles increased dramatically from 3.3 billion sold in
1997 to 15 billion in 2002. (3)
- Bottled water also has an undeniable environmental impact. In 2007, production of water
bottles for U.S. consumption alone used up to 54 million barrels of oil. Seventy-five percent of
plastic water bottles are not recycled, instead ending up on beaches, in rivers, and partially full of
unidentified liquid on nearly all the empty bus seats youve ever tried to sit in. (4)
- Two big pieces of news out of San Francisco this week: Barry Bonds started a brief stint
coaching for the Giants, and the city made significant progress toward outlawing plastic water
bottles. As a result, the average level of self-satisfaction exhibited by San Franciscans increased
by a factor of three. (4)
- Researchers at the Pacific Institute in Oakland California ran the numbers and found that
bottle production alone wastes 50 million barrels of oil a year (that's 2.5 days of US oil
consumption). (5)
Possible Solutions:
Works Cited:
1. "Bottled Water Costs Consumers and the Environment. 6 Sept. 2014.
<http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/bottled/bottled-water-bad-for-people-and-theenvironment/>.
2. "Bottled Water". 25 Apr 2008. 6 Sep. 2014.
<http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/qbw.asp>
3. "7 Good Reasons to Quit Drinking Bottled Water. 10 Mar 2012. 6 Sept. 2014.
<http://www.care2.com/greenliving/7-good-reasons-to-quit-drinking-bottled-water.html>.
4. Andrews, Eve. "San Francisco Moves to Ban Plastic Water Bottles, Scoffs at Every Other Sad
City. 11 Mar 2014. 6 Sep 2014. <http://grist.org/news/san-francisco-moves-to-ban-plasticwater-bottles-scoffs-at-every-other-sad-city/>.
5. Whitty, Julia. "Your Water Bottle Is One-Quarter Oil. 27 Feb 2009. 6 Sep 2014.
<http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/02/your-water-bottle-one-quarter-full-oil>.
Research For Extra Info:
http://www.nmw.co.rs/nmw/index_en.php?page=273 (history of bottled water)
http://www.businessinsider.com/facts-bottled-water-industry-2011-10?op=1 Video
http://www.greatlakeslaw.org/blog/2009/03/a-brief-history-of-bottled-water-in-america.html
http://www.watercoolerseurope.eu/news/a-brief-history-of-the-bottled-water-industry
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/curriculum/outdoored/programs/waterbottl
efactpages.pdf
http://www.efbw.eu/index.php?id=39
http://www.greatlakeslaw.org/blog/2009/03/a-brief-history-of-bottled-water-in-america.html