The Bottled
Water Craze
By Hillary Mayell and Pat Murphy
Saturday, November 13, 1999
Next
to the hand-held cellular telephone, one other symbol of the
'90s has emerged as the most ubiquitous accouterment of
people around the globe, from cosmopolitan world capitals to
the most primitive remote villages of Third World countries.
The disposable plastic bottle of water.
Billions of so-called convenience bottles
are consumed every year, while billions more gallons are
consumed annually in larger bulk bottles used in water
dispensing fountains in homes and offices.
Bottled water is everywhere.
GIs carried bottled water into combat
against Iraq in the Gulf War. World-class athletes depend on
bottled water in their events. Victims of Mother Nature's
most horrific disasters survive on bottled water rushed into
devastated areas in the aftermath of weather calamities.
Office workers keep bottled water handy at their
workstations. Fitness faddists keep bottles handy in the
gym.
As further illustration of the wide
acceptance of bottled water, one of more than 900 brands now
flooding the U.S. market is designed especially for dogs.
It's name, Pawier, a canine play on the name of the
granddaddy of bottled water, Perrier.
In the war for market share of
bottled waters, the competition for shelf space in
grocery stores is fierce. |
What accounts for bottled water's universal
appeal and high consumption?
Gary Hemphill, a spokesman for the
Beverage Marketing Corporation, which tracks trends in the
beverage industry, says bottled water's popularity stems
from several influences of the 1990s — convenience for a
more active and mobile society, lifestyle, health habits,
dissatisfaction with tap water.
Large bulk bottled water and individual
bottled water sales in the United States in 1998 amounted to
a staggering 3.8 billion gallons — up 10 percent over
1997.
But the fastest growing segment, Hemphill
notes, is in so-called individual convenience bottles —
996 billion gallons in 1998, or about 25 percent of the
total market, and growing at the rate of 25 to 30 percent
per year.
As for revenues, the U.S. industry posted
$4.3 billion in 1998 — no small accomplishment for an
industry that virtually didn't exist 20 years ago.
He also says that as bottled water sales
have surged, the industry has noticed slippage in carbonated
diet soft drinks.
Yearly consumption, Hemphill said, was
nearly 14 gallons for each American.
As for whether bottled water is better
than tap water produced by public water systems, it's a
matter of taste. In Tucson, Ariz., a study by Arthur D.
Little Inc. found that a test group of residents preferred
the taste of bottled water over water distributed by the
city.
Which brings up some of the controversy
about bottled water that has popped up in recent years.
The American Dental Association says that
after years of decline, tooth decay is now reappearing in
young people — probably because they're drinking bottled
water rather than municipal water that's treated with
fluoride.
This prompted McKesson Water Product Co.,
of Pasadena, California, to begin producing a new line of
bottled water, Junior Sport, with fluoride.
Concern over whether children are getting
enough fluoride led Dr. Michael Easley, director of the
National Center for Fluoridation Police and Research at
State University of New York, to call on parents to discuss
the problem with their children's dentists.
Another controversy surrounds the practice
of some private bottlers in using municipal water and
promoting the bottled brand as better.
But a spokesperson for the International
Bottled Water Association, Zail Dugal, said that in fact a
system known as the "multi-barrier approach" to
bottled water improves on the original municipal supply.
She identified this process as including
reverse osmosis, micron filtration, distillation, ozonation
and applying ultraviolet light during the process.
Dugal says that about 25 percent of all
U.S. bottled water originates in municipal water systems.
Good Housekeeping leaped into the
controversy last year, pointing out that once bottlers treat
and purify municipal water, they don't have to tell
consumers where it came from. But Good Housekeeping said
bottled water that comes from non-municipal sources and
without chemicals will be labeled as "spring",
"artesian" or "mineral water."
The water from Trinity Springs
bubbles up through granite and crystal and is
captured in a springhouse, where it is
gravitationally moved to the bottling plant. |
One of the newest labels on the market,
Trinity Springs, boasts of a exotic and unique source — an
aquifer more than two miles below the Earth's surface in
obscure, Paradise, Idaho, where water carbon dated to the
last Ice Age some 16,000 years ago is bubbling up through
granite and crystal faults.
As the ultimate tribute, a supply of
bottled water is being officially recommended by various
U.S. government agencies and emergency services as a must on
the list of basic supplies to be on hand in households for
possible emergencies as the year 2000 arrives.
Take action
For general information on bottled water and
even a hydration calculator, visit the International
Bottled Water Association.
The The
Bottled Water Web is a portal for the bottled water
industry and contains bottled water news, references and
information on new products.
To visit a few bottled water distributor
sites, try Dasani,
Coca-Cola, or Trinity
Springs.
The EPA's Surf
Your Watershed is another great source of water
information.
Related Links:
Southeast
groundwater pollution feared
Earth
Friendly Living: Is bottled water really worth it?
ENN Features — March 1, 1999
USGS
tallies the extras in our water
ENN News — July 2, 1999
Sounding
the alarm on contaminated water
ENN News — May 13, 1999
Arsenic
levels in drinking water too high, study finds
ENN News — March 25, 1999
U.N.
official predicts war over freshwater
ENN News — January 5, 1999
Earth
Friendly Living: What's in your drinking water?
ENN Features — February 17, 1999
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