BOTTLED WATER IS ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - Bottled water, the world's fastest growing
beverage, carries a heavy environmental cost, adding plastic to
landfills and putting pressure on natural springs, the author of a new
US report said today.

"Bottled water is really expensive, in terms of environmental costs and
economically," said Ling Li, who wrote the report for the
Washington-based Worldwatch Institute. . .

The environmental impact can start at the source, where some local
streams and underground aquifers become depleted when there is
"excessive withdrawal" for bottled water, according to the report.

In addition to the energy cost of producing, bottling, packaging,
storing and shipping bottled water, there is also the environmental cost
of the millions of tonnes of oil-derived plastic needed to make the
bottles.

"The beverage industry benefits the most from our bottled water
obsession," Ms Ling said. "But this does nothing for the staggering
number of the world's poor who see safe drinking water as at best a
luxury and at worst an unattainable goal."

Worldwatch estimated 35 to 50 per cent of urban dwellers in Africa and
Asia lack adequate access to safe potable water.

Most water is bottled in polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, which
requires less energy to recycle and does not release chlorine into the
atmosphere when burned. But recycling rates have declined: about 23.1
per cent of PET water bottles were recycled in the United States in
2005, compared with 39.7 per cent 10 years earlier, the report said.

http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,21711627-5005940,00.html

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