Some Bottled Water Facts

According to various experiments, most people can’t tell the difference between bottled and tap water. One of the latest studies was carried out by students at Boston University, who found a third of taste-testers couldn’t identify the tap water sample correctly.

Just 50 years ago the thought of buying bottled water when it was freely available from the tap would have seemed unusual to most people, yet today sales are higher than ever. A recent study looks at how much we are actually drinking, how our obsession started and the devastating effect it’s having on our environment.

Some bottled water facts:

• The first documented case of commercially distributed bottled mineral water dates back to 1767. It was sold in glass bottles by Jackson’s Spa in Boston. it was promoted as a therapeutic product, and it was believed that drinking or bathing in the water could cure many common ailments.

• Cheap plastic bottles have been around since 1947 but it wasn’t until a stronger, high-density polyethylene was introduced in the 1960s that they became more widespread. The invention of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles in 1973, which could hold fizzy drinks such as Coca-Cola and carbonated water, took their use to a whole new level.

• Bottled water didn’t really take off in America until 1977, according to Priceonomics, following a £3.73 million advertising campaign by the French brand Perrier. Targeted at sophisticated baby-boomers, the sparkling water was promoted as a high-status, classy drink with the tagline: 'Earth’s First Soft Drink'.

• In 2016, sales of bottled water overtook soda in America for the first time. According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, the nation consumed 39 gallons of bottled water per person compared to 38.5 gallons of soda. That’s more than milk or beer.

• Soda manufacturers are the biggest producers of bottled water in the world. Coca-Cola owns Dasani, PepsiCo has Aquafina and recently launched LIFEWTR, while Nestle owns Pure Life, Vittel and Poland Spring, among several others.

• Global consumption of bottled water has rocketed during the past decade from 47 billion gallons in 2007 to a predicted 86 billion gallons by the end of 2017, according to statista.com.

• Brita estimate that the US alone uses enough plastic water bottles each year to stretch around the world more than 190 times.

• £74.5 billion is spent worldwide on bottled water every year, according to The Water Project. At around 91p, your average bottle is 300 times more expensive than tap water.

Some unsettling facts:

Water companies like to promote their products alongside images of natural springs and ice-topped mountains but, according to the Safe Drinking Water Foundation, it is estimated that more than a quarter of all bottled water is simply elaborately filtered from the tap. Products implicated include Coca-Cola’s Dasani and PepsiCo's Aquafina.

Bottled water brands have been forced to come clean:

• In 2007, PepsiCo updated the label on Aquafina to make it clearer it contained tap water, following pressure from organisations including Corporate Accountability International. The previous wording, 'Bottled at the source P.W.S' was changed to 'The Aquafina in this bottle is purified water that originates from a public water source.' Nestle’s Pure Life and Coca-Cola’s Dasani have also been accused of willfully misleading consumers.

Only one in six plastic bottles end up being recycled, nearly all end up in landfills in the end:

• Despite curbside collections and drop-off centers for recyclables in most neighbourhoods, the Container Recycling Institute estimates that only one in six plastic bottles in the US are recycled, according to Brita. A study by Science Advanced in 2017 revealed fewer than 1% of plastic water bottles are recycled more than once, so the plastic nearly all ends up in landfills in the end.

450 years for plastic bottles to decompose:

• Most plastic bottles are generally thought to take at least 450 years to fully biodegrade, though it can take some up to 1,000 years. Bottles made with polyethylene terephthalate (PET) are not biodegradable.

But, maybe the most unsettling fact is that in todays world, over 800 million people don't have access to clean water:

• While millions of dollars are unnecessarily spent on bottled water around the globe each year, one in ten people on the planet don’t have access to clean water at all. According to WaterAid, a total of 844 million are without this basic need and 289,000 children under five die each year due to diseases caused by poor sanitation. That’s one child every two minutes.

Information source  here
Original story by:  LoveFood