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The bottled water industry is an $8 billion plus

industry.
 
For a natural resource that most of us have
access to for minimal cost, water is doing
pretty well as a revenue generator. The
bottled version of the stuff is currently an $8
billion industry in the United States alone, with
Americans drinking about 7 billion gallons of it
in 2005. That's compared to hundreds of
billions of gallons of tap water, but for a
product that can cost up to 10,000 times more
than its municipal counterpart, it's still an
impressive market share. 
So what's the appeal? The three most
common reasons given by bottled-water
drinkers are healthiness, purity and taste. As
we'll get into later on, the first two reasons are
somewhat misguided, and the third is open for
debate. For a seemingly basic food product,
bottled water has generated its share of
controversy. Some of it focuses on the federal
and state regulations governing the industry,
some of it goes deeper into the ecological
implications of bottling and transporting
billions on billions of gallons of something that
The pretty pictures and superlative language
on the labels of bottled waters can
sometimes be misleading. One famous
example is the now defunct Alaska Water,
which stated on the label, "Alaska Premium
Glacier Drinking Water: Pure Glacier Water
From the Last Unpolluted Frontier," and
came from one of the municipal water
supplies in Juneau. The currently available
Glacier Clear Water comes from a source in
Greeneville, Tennessee. But if you look past
the names and descriptions and go straight
to the water type, the label will more or less
tell you what's in the bottle. "Spring water"
and "artesian water" are examples of
bottled-water types.  
Aquafina and Dasani, the two top-selling
brands in the United States, are "purified
drinking water." Other popular brands,
including Poland Spring and Arrowhead, are
"spring water." Evian is "mineral water," and
Perrier is "sparkling mineral water." Eldorado
Springs is "artesian spring water." These
labels primarily indicate two things about the
water in the bottle: its source and any
treatment it has undergone. We'll examine
the sources and treatments associated with
each type of bottled water and take a look at
the process Aquafina uses to produce its
"purified drinking water," which starts out as
plain old tap water purchased from public
water supplies.
Artesian water: Artesian water comes
from an artesian well, which draws water
from a confined aquifer (an underground,
porous rock or sand formation that bears
water and is under pressure from a layer of
rock or clay above it). The pressure from the
confining layer forces the water from the
aquifer upward. The level of the water supply
the artesian well is drawing from must sit
above the uppermost layer of the aquifer.

Mineral water: Mineral water is spring


water that has at least 250 parts per million
(ppm) of total dissolved solids (TDS) in it.
These "dissolved solids" are minerals like
calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium,
and they must be present in the water at the
source, not added later. By contrast, regular
spring water typically has about 50 ppm of
TDS.

Naturally sparkling water: Naturally


sparkling water comes from a spring or
artesian well and has natural carbonation in
it. The carbonation may be removed during
Purified water: Purified water comes from
either a protected underground source or
from a municipal drinking-water supply
(public tap water). It has been
"demineralized" -- treated by one or more of
several processes to remove dissolved
solids. If the water comes from a municipal
water source that uses chlorine as a
disinfectant, the manufacturer may further
treat the water to remove the chlorine.

Spring water: Spring water comes from a


protected, underground water source from
which the water flows to the surface on its
own. It may be collected either at the
surface spring or through a sanitary,
protected hole drilled directly into the source
feeding the spring. If the water is collected
through a hole drilled into the source, it has
to have exactly the same composition as the
water in the surface spring.

Well water: Well water is drawn from a


protected well that taps directly into an
Filtration: The water is sent through filters
or membranes whose holes will only let
through extremely small particles, typically
those smaller than 1 micron. Contaminants
larger than 1 micron, including many germs
and inorganic solids, can't make it through.

Distillation: The water is vaporized. Since


minerals don't vaporize, all that's left after
the vapor recondenses is demineralized
water.

UV-light treatment: Ultraviolet (UV) light is


a disinfecting agent -- it kills
microorganisms, including bacteria and
viruses, although some microorganisms are
less affected by it than others. The process
uses no chemicals. Instead, the water is
subjected to intense UV light inside a
chamber. The UV light damages
microorganisms at the cellular level, either
killing them or causing them to lose the
Ozonation: Ozone gas (the same type found
in the atmosphere), typically created by
subjecting oxygen to electrical current, is an
antimicrobial agent -- it kills microorganisms.
The water is infused with ozone (03)
molecules as a disinfecting process, and the
molecules naturally break down and leave
the water fairly quickly. As an additional
benefit, when the ozone molecules degrade
to 02 and molecules, this leaves free oxygen
ions to bond with other contaminants like
iron and sulfur. When the oxygen bonds to
these molecules, it turns them into oxides,
which are insoluble. These now-insoluble
contaminants are then filtered out.

. Reverse osmosis: The water is forced


through semipermeable membranes not
porous enough to let minerals or other
contaminants through.
The global bottled water market grew by
7% in 2006 to reach a value of $60,938.1
million (60.9 billion). The market grew by
8.1% in 2006 to reach a volume of 115,393.5
million liters. In 2011, the market is forecast
to have a value of $86,421.2 million (86.4
billion), an increase of 41.8% since 2006. In
2011, the market is forecast to have a
volume of 174,286.6 million liters, an
increase of 51% since 2006.

The global rate of consumption more than


doubled between 1997 and 2005. Purified
water is currently the leading global seller,
with U.S. companies dominating the field,
and natural spring water, purified water and
flavored water being the fastest-growing
market segments.
One major criticism of bottled water
concerns the bottles themselves. Individual
use bottled water is generally packaged in
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
According to a NAPCOR study, PET water
bottles account for 50% of all the PET
bottles and containers collected by curbside
recycling, and the recycling rate for water
bottles is 23.4%, a 16.42% increase over the
2006 rate of 20.1%. PET bottled water
containers make up one-third of 1 percent
of the waste stream in the United States.

An estimated 50 billion bottles of water are


consumed per annum in the US. The
International Bottled Water Association also
reports that the average weight of a plastic
bottle water was 13.83 grams in 2007,
compared to 18.90 grams in 2000,
representing a 26.7% decline. PepsiCo has
since introduced a bottle weighing 10.9
grams and using 20 percent less plastic,
which it says is the lightest bottle of its kind
that is nationally distributed.
Bottled water processed with distillation or
reverse osmosis lacks fluoride ions which are
sometimes naturally present in ground
water. The drinking of distilled water may
conceivably increase the risk of tooth decay
due to a lack of this element.

According to a 1999 NRDC study, at least


22 percent of brands tested, at least one
sample contained chemical contaminants at
levels above strict state health limits. Some
of the contaminants found in the study could
pose health risks if consumed over a long
period of time.

The rate of total dissolved solids is


sometimes 4 times higher in bottled mineral
waters than in bottled tap ones. High
amounts of calcium in mineral bottled waters
for example make that a daily and excessive
consumption may result in hypercalcemia,
which highly increases the risk of kidney or
gallstones.
In May 2005, the ABC news program "20/20"
sent five different national brands of bottled
water and one sample of tap water taken from
a New York City drinking fountain to a
microbiologist for testing. The lab tested for
contaminants that can cause illness, like E.coli.
The results showed no difference whatsoever,
in terms of unhealthy contaminants, between
the bottled waters and the tap water. So
perhaps it's a matter of semantics, but the
issue seems to be more one of purity than of
healthiness: Some bottled waters do contain
fewer total dissolved solids than tap water, but
most scientists agree that the levels of
dissolved solids in tap water are not harmful to
human health. And when it comes to dissolved
solids, in certain cases and in some opinions,
more is actually more. People who drink
mineral water presumably are drinking it
because they believe the higher mineral count
in the water is beneficial to their health. In the
case of mineral water, it may just be that the
water is healthier than tap water.
If someone is looking for purity, choosing
purified water may deliver the goods. With
an industry standard of fewer than 10 ppm of
total dissolved solids, purified water is pretty
close to plain H20. On the other hand, if
someone defines "pure" as "safe," we're
right back to the healthiness issue discussed
above. Bottled water sources are typically
tested for harmful contaminants once a week
at most. Municipal water supplies are tested
hundreds of times every month. Tap water
may not be perfectly clear, or it may have a
slight chlorine aftertaste, but according to
the Minnesota Department of Health, those
are merely aesthetic qualities that do not
indicate the water is unsafe. And bottled
water -- even purified water -- does not have
to be completely free of contaminants. It
simply has to have below the FDA-allowed
and/or state-allowed level of certain
contaminants.

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