With more than 1 million bottles of water being sold every minute around the world, the industry is raking in huge moolah but this has come at a huge climate, health, social and environmental costs at the same time exposing limited progress in and many failures of public water supply systems, a UN report has flagged concerns ahead of the World Water Day on March 22.
While sales are expected to almost double by 2030, from $270 billion to $500 billion, the report by the UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health has expressed concern that the rapidly-growing industry can undermine progress towards a key sustainable development goal (SDG): Safe water for all.
“This points to a global case of extreme social injustice, whereby billions of people worldwide do not have access to reliable water services while others enjoy water luxury,” said the report which is based on an analysis of literature and data from 109 countries including India. It noted that in just five decades bottled water has developed into “a major and essentially standalone economic sector,” experiencing 73% growth from 2010 to 2020, but the unrestricted expansion “is not aligned strategically with the goal of providing universal access to drinking water or at least slows global progress in this regard, distracting development efforts and redirecting attention to a less reliable and less affordable option for many, while remaining highly profitable for producers.”
“The rise in bottled water consumption reflects decades of limited progress in and many failures of public water supply systems,” the report says, noting that providing safe water to the roughly 2 billion people without it would require an annual investment of less than half the US$ 270 billion now spent every year on bottled water. Bottled water per litre can cost 150 to 1,000 times more than the price a municipality charges for tap water.
The study quotes surveys showing bottled water is often perceived in the Global North as a healthier and tastier product than tap water - more a luxury good than a necessity. In contrast, in the Global South, sales are driven by the lack or absence of reliable public water supplies and water delivery infrastructure limitations due to rapid urbanization.
What’s worst, in mid- and low-income countries, bottled water consumption is linked to poor tap water quality and often unreliable public water supply systems - problems often caused by corruption and chronic underinvestment in piped water infrastructure.
UNU-INWEH researcher and lead author Zeineb Bouhlel pointed out that beverage corporations are adept at marketing bottled water as a safe alternative to tap water by drawing attention to isolated public water system failures. He added that “even if in certain countries piped water is or can be of good quality, restoring public trust in tap water is likely to require substantial marketing and advocacy efforts.”
Dr. Bouhlel further noted in the report that the source of bottled water (municipal system, surface, etc.) the treatment processes used (e.g. chlorination, ultraviolet disinfection, ozonation, reverse osmosis), the storage conditions (duration, light exposure, temperature), and packaging (plastic, glass), can all potentially alter water quality.
Enlisting examples from over 40 countries in every world region of contamination of hundreds of bottled water brands and all bottled water types, researchers further said, “the mineral composition of bottled water can vary significantly between different brands, within the same brand in different countries, and even between different bottles of the same batch.”
Co-author Vladimir Smakhtin, past Director of UNU-INWEH, underscores the report’s finding that “bottled water is generally not nearly as well-regulated and is tested less frequently and for fewer parameters. Strict water quality standards for tap water are rarely applied to bottled water, and even if such analyses are carried out, the results seldom make it to the public domain.”
Bottled water producers, he says, have largely avoided the scrutiny governments impose on public water utilities, and amid the market’s rapid growth, it is “probably more important than ever to strengthen legislation that regulates the industry overall, and its water quality standards in particular.” On the environmental front too, the industry has come under the scanner. The researchers noted that the industry produced around 600 billion plastic bottles and containers in 2021, which converts to some 25 million tonnes of PET waste - most of it not recycled and destined for landfills.
Also “little data available on water volumes extracted, largely due to the lack of transparency and legal foundation that would have forced bottling companies to disclose that information publicly and assess the environmental consequences,” it said.
As per the report, five companies - PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Nestlé S.A., Danone S.A, and Primo Corporation have combined sales of $65 billion, over 25% of the global total.
