Bottled beverages

The marketing of bottled beverages, with a slant towards the health conscious consumer, is a prime example of how a well intentioned idea can be transformed into a major environmental catastrophe. While there are still a few drinks sold in health food stores that are actually healthy, the vast majority of bottled elixirs are just sweetened water cleverly designed to catch our eye with bright logos and fancy bottles. Aside from the dubious health benefits of the beverage, it is the bottle that is the true culprit on the environmental front. Whether we are considering a bottle of soda or water, the plastic, aluminum, or glass that comes along with the product is generally more costly to produce, and more costly to the health of the planet, than what is inside. The irony being that it is the wealthiest nations, where potable drinking water flows freely from practically every faucet, that spend the most money on bottled water, while poorer areas struggle to find enough water for basic human needs.

We all know that water is as essential to human life as oxygen. Therefore back in the early 1990’s, when beverage companies began a big push to sell bottled water, it could only be viewed as a win-win situation. The theory being that active people should easily be able to rehydrate with the highest quality natural spring water available. By drinking more water it would also cut down on the amount of sugary drinks that are consumed. This theory, along with a massive advertising campaign, worked better than anyone dreamed possible. In just three years, 2002 to 2005, bottled water sales doubled, rising to 30 billion units sold annually (earning over $10 billion in sales by 2006), making it not only one of the fastest growing industries of the past decade but the second largest saleable beverage. The advantage of selling water, without the complication of recipes or ingredients, attracted corporate giants like Coca-Cola and Nestle who were in bad need of a healthy product to compliment their line of sugar based beverages.

So with all the goodness of spring water what could possibly be the problem with more Americans drinking it? Before talking of the myriad environmental concerns, we should take note that in recent years companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. have been forced to admit that their bottled water is nothing but purified tap water sourced from public reservoirs. Pepsi’s Aquafina, the best-selling brand, and Coke's Dasani are generally no healthier than the tap water in your own home run through a quality water filter. Additionally, even true spring water can have detrimental health effects due to the transient pollutants in the water or the leaching of chemicals from thin plastic containers into the water, especially when the bottle has been stored at higher than normal room temperatures.

But even if we were to entirely disregard the health argument, the detrimental ecological effects of bottled beverages might be enough to convince us to reduce our dependency. Presently, Americans consume about 8 billion gallons of bottled water per year. Most of the plastic bottles sold are made out of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic which is a petroleum product and can take up to 1,000 years to decompose. Since PET degrades so slowly the discarded bottles will invariably interact with every sort of eco-system as well as a host of animals, some of them wild and many that humans use as food. Furthermore, producing these bottles for American consumption alone requires more than 17 million barrels of oil (not including the energy for transportation); this is enough oil to fuel over 1.5 million cars annually.

Along with production, the problem of what to do with the billions of containers we use each year has always been a dilemma. While recycling is preferred many view it as a necessary evil, as it is not the magic bullet that some environmentalists would like to imagine. In order to recycle anything we still rely heavily on water and energy. Plus it can be a tough sell to local municipalities as the process itself can be expensive and rarely offsets its own costs. However, given the choice between piling containers in a landfill, sending them into the ocean’s depths, or recycling them, it is far better to choose the latter. In fact, producing just one aluminum can from raw materials uses the same amount of energy that it takes to recycle twenty.

Compared to overall consumption all too few plastic, glass and aluminum containers are recycled. Of the 164 million plastic bottles that Americans use each day only about half are recycled and only about 35% of all bottled containers are recycled each year, worldwide the numbers are even lower. The Container Recycling Institute estimates that approximately 15 million barrels of crude oil equivalent were consumed in 2005 to replace the 2 million tons of PET bottles that were wasted instead of recycled.
In my home town of New Paltz, N.Y. we now have beautifully painted recycling bins on every corner of Main St. These bins were sponsored by local businesses that all recognized the importance of keeping our environment clean. While New Paltz attracts many weekend visitors it is still a very small community of under 13,000 residents. It would obviously make a much greater impact if it were obligatory for large cities to place recycling bins on major thoroughfares and subway platforms.


Where it all goes

Possibly the greatest problem with trash versus recycling is that the left over containers are either sent off to landfills or make their way into the ocean (in 2006 Americans tossed 22 billion plastic bottles into landfills). Along with livestock production, landfills are a major emitter of both methane and carbon dioxide. This so called Landfill Gas (LFG) is approximately 50% methane and is created when organic materials are decomposed by bacteria under anaerobic conditions (in the absence of oxygen). While plastic is not an organic waste product and doesn’t emit methane, it still takes up a tremendous amount of space and creates an environment where our biodegradable household trash breaks down with less possibility of going back into the earth as compost and therefore traps methane at lower levels. The good news on this front is that the LFG’s from landfills, being a static environment that can be exploited fairly easily, have recently been used to produce energy. Since most of the methane gets trapped under the rubbish, large gas collection pipes are now able to extract the LFG’s and store it as needed. Nationwide there are presently 455 landfills being used to produce electricity with many more waiting in the wings.

The problem of non-biodegradable containers that have built up in our oceans, however, is a prospect that is slightly more bleak. The industrialized world has largely ignored the accumulation of its own waste products that are now being trapped in large pockets of our oceans. Human consumption and negligence has produced the world’s largest landfill in what is now being called the “Eastern Garbage Patch” (aka the Great Pacific garbage patch), a vortex of unmanageable marine debris that has been trapped by currents in the North Pacific Ocean. This vortex has been on our radar since the mid-1980’s but the classic combination of denial and over consumption has allowed it to swell steadily, now estimated to be roughly twice the size of Texas!

Since plastics do not degrade in the same way that organic waste does, this enormous area (holding approximately 100 million tons of debris, 80% of which is plastic) continues to break down slowly into ever smaller pieces of plastic, eventually becoming tiny enough for aquatic organisms to ingest. In this way the plastic polymers enter our food chain, passing from tiny fish to larger ones. Furthermore, over half of the plastic sinks down to the depths, damaging life on the ocean floor and making our oceans increasingly acidic.

With all the talk of mercury and plastic now found in fish, we might feel better by limiting our consumption of seafood, but even if this safeguards our health there is no escaping the fact that this prodigious waste affects our climate. The ocean plays a critical role in sequestering Carbon Dioxide (CO2), in fact the amount of carbon stored in the ocean is 50 times greater than that in the atmosphere. Overall, the ocean acts as a carbon sink, with a net intake of approximately two billion metric tons of carbon per year, which is equal to about one-third of all human carbon emissions. This continuous interaction between our sea and air is a natural cycle that aims to bring atmospheric levels back into balance by absorbing CO2, trapping it, and then recirculating it for over one-hundred years.

Much of the absorbed carbon will descend to the ocean floor, where it is then trapped within deep ocean sediments. If we fail to clean up our oceans then not only will they begin to lose their greenhouse gas trapping capability but, with rising temperatures and acidity, there is also the possibility of the previously trapped carbon rising up and out of the surface. If the ocean’s pH level continues to fall, as it has over the past two hundred years, much of the previously trapped CO2 would have nowhere else to go but back into the atmosphere, causing global warming to occur at a much quicker rate.

And if the aforementioned issues weren’t enough, there is also the problem of water consumption, just to quench our thirst for water itself. Due to hygiene standards and the manufacturing process, it takes three liters of water to produce each liter of bottled water we produce. So if our intention is to stay hydrated while at the same time safeguarding our most precious natural resource (with the possible exception of oxygen), then the only logical answer is to use an in-home water filtration system and reuse a stainless steel thermos. Given that the upfront cost of a high quality water filter can be upwards of $300, it is understandable why most people opt for the quick convenience of a bottled beverage. But with the cost of bottled water running between $2-$4 per gallon (depending on what brand and how much you buy), and the cost of filtered tap water at about fifteen-cents per gallon (once the filter is purchased), the average American would save enough money in one year to pay back the cost of their filter.

As with most things, the best way to preserve a dwindling supply is to avoid unnecessary waste. We waste water in many ways, but the most commonly discussed - the toilet, lawn, and shower – amount to only about 5% of the overall water usage in the U.S. While this household waste is definitely something to be cognizant of, as it’s generally a simple fix, it will never compare to the water wasted at a factory farm or a bottling facility. When we prioritize a minor convenience over the mounting evidence of coexisting eco-damage years may pass by before any steps are taken to alleviate the consequences. By making some simple and enduring adjustments to our daily diets we will be saving massive amounts of water for ourselves and future generations.