Waste Management

Bottled Water and Its Environmental Cost The next time you buy a bottle of drinking water, you need to pause and think. You may not bat an eyelid shelling out ₹ 15 for a litre of bottled water but what you don't realise is that you are actually paying over 4,200 times of what you normally pay for a litre of tap water. The economics of drinking water has always baffled me. What is perplexing is that the average urban middle class squirms and protests if the Delhi Jal Board, for instance, tries to 'nominally' raise the price of tap water. Paying a little over one paise for three litres of tap water (DJB prices tap water at ₹ 3.50 per 1000 litres) they feel they are already being made to pay through the nose. Price being of little constraint for the consumers, the global bottled water industry is galloping. In 2004, the world consumed 154 billion litres, of which India's share was 5.1 billion litres. Expected to grow at 40 percent annually, the ₹ 1,800-crore bottle water industry is experiencing unprecedented boom with over 1200 water factories doing business throughout the country. If you think bottled water assures you of purity and safety, it is time you think again. Even in the U.S., despite strict quality norms formulated by the Food and Drug Administration, it is safely assumed that nearly 40 percent of the bottled water is repacked pipe water. Shockingly, what is little known is that more than five litres of water is required to produce every litre of packed water. In other words, 770 billion litres of water were used to produce and pack the 154 billion litres of water that the world consumed in 2004. What a colossal waste ! Bottled water also has additional, hidden environmental costs. According to the Pacific Institute in California, the entire process of making plastic for the bottles requires huge energy. In America alone, where nearly 26 billion litres of bottled water was consumed in 2004, an equivalent of 20 million barrels of oil was