Bottled water may seem like a common convenience product, but in learning more facts about bottled water, it’s more damaging to the environment than most people think. From the millions of bottles sitting in landfills to the incredible amount of resources required to create a bottle, bottled water is not an environmentally-friendly or sustainable product. Read on for some bottled water facts that may surprise you.
6 Facts About Bottled Water:
- It can take 450 years for a plastic bottle to decompose in a landfill. (source) Seeing as many plastic bottles are not recycled, they’ll spend nearly half a millennium before they decompose.
- 25% or more of bottled water is tap water. (source) Studies have shown that there is no guarantee that bottled water is safer or cleaner than regular municipal tap water.
- Some bottled water companies have been accused of taking from residential water supplies during times of drought. (source) Nestlé in particular has come under scrutiny for tapping public water supplies during times of drought, bottling it, and selling it for profit.
- Americans drink 43.7 gallons of bottled water per person every year. (source) That adds up to a total of more than 14 billion gallons of bottled water per year.
- It takes 3 liters of water to make a half-liter bottle. (source) Packaging takes a significant amount of water, and the amount of water needed to make the bottle could be more than 6 times the amount of water in the bottle.
- In 2009, the Australian town of Bundanoon became the first town on Earth to outlaw bottled water. (source) All of the town’s stores and cafes removed bottled water from their stocks. Public drinking fountains and filtered water dispensers are now available throughout the town.
