The Environmental Impact of Bottled Water

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), in 2006, the equivalent of 2 billion half-liter bottles of water were shipped to U.S. ports, creating thousands of tons of global warming pollution and other air pollution. In New York City alone, the transportation of bottled water from western Europe released an estimated 3,800 tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere. In California, 18 million gallons of bottled water were shipped in from Fiji in 2006, producing about 2,500 tons of global warming pollution.

And while the bottles come from far away, most of them end up close to home -- in a landfill. Most bottled water comes in recyclable Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles, but only about 13 percent of the bottles we use get recycled. In 2005, 2 million tons of plastic water bottles ended up clogging landfills instead of getting recycled.

The Pacific Institute calculates that the process of manufacturing plastic bottles for water consumed in the U.S. uses approximately 17 million barrels of oil per year. The manufacture of every ton of PET plastic bottles produces around 3 tons of  carbon dioxide (CO2). Bottling water thus created more than 2.5 million tons of CO2 in 2006.

In addition, large amounts of fossil fuel are expended delivering the water from its source to end user. Some bottled water is transported long distances by ship in addition to the distances it travels by truck or rail. It takes a fair amount of energy to move a plastic bottle from where it is made, to where it is filled, then to the store, and finally into the consumer's hand. 250g (0.00025 tons) of CO2 are released for each bottle of FIJI Water imported to the United States. This includes 93g for manufacturing a bottle in China, 4g for transporting an empty bottle to Fiji, and 153g for shipping a full bottle to the United States.

According to the World Wildlife Fund’s 2001 report, Bottled Water: Understanding a Social Phenomenon, roughly 1.5 million tons of plastic are used in the bottling of 89 billion liters of water each year. Most of the bottles are made of the oil-derived polyethylene terephthalate, which is known as PET. While PET is less toxic than many plastics, the Berkeley Ecology Center says that manufacturing PET generates more than 100 times the toxic emissions – in the form of nickel, ethylbenzene, ethylene oxide and benzene – compared to making the same amount of glass. 

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