Some Thoughts on Bottled Water:
Or it’s more than 128 gallons for $1.00

by Dan Gray

Board Member, Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers
Adventures Coordinator, Urban Ecology Center
Member, Great Waters Group

When last at the grocery store I glanced at some prices for bottled water.  One could buy 20 ounces of cold water from Dasani  for $1.29.  In the bottled water aisle, one could purchase a gallon of “Infant Drinking Water” (there was no explanatory information on the label), for $0.70.  For that price you get some water and a plastic container.

According to our Milwaukee Water Works bill, we are charged $1.18 per Ccf (cubic hundred feet) of water.  One Ccf is 748 gallons.  One dollar provides us with 128 gallons of water and the treatment of that water after we have used it.  That works out to $0.0078 per gallon, or about ¾ of a cent. 

128 gallons of ice cold Dasani would run you $1056.77 (or $8.26 a gallon).  You could acquire 128 gallons of “Infant Drinking Water” for $89.60.  In addition to the water, you would have 819 blue plastic Dasani bottles, or 128 empty gallon jugs, to dispose of.

The contents of bottled water are not tightly regulated.  In some cases, bottled water is the same as tap water, or has only been additionally filtered.  The Milwaukee Water Works reports annually on the quality of the water they treat and the levels of contaminants found in the water.  Further details can be found on their website  www.water.mpw.net.

However, this is not a puff piece for that department.  I have studied the reports and am satisfied with the quality of our drinking water.  I have drunk gallons and gallons of the stuff and am satisfied with the taste.  But I am concerned with the massive growth of the bottled water industry on several levels. 

First off, the price of bottled water is ridiculous (please re-read the first three paragraphs). Second, the total costs of bottled water are astronomical. Just consider the resources needed to pump, bottle, box up, transport, and then retail something that is already available in every house and building in this city.  Then add the costs of dealing with the empty containers.  This is a cost not borne by the bottled water companies.  It is a cost borne by the consumer and the community for waste disposal and the continued filling of landfills.

These are the obvious costs, but possibly even more important are the environmental costs.  Pumping by bottled water companies lowers the groundwater levels, drying up neighboring wells, springs and streams  (see Robert Glennon’s Water Follies:  Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters, Island Press, 2002).  Water that should be available for people, animals and trees is now shipped across the country and sold.

My suggestions for the average water drinker would be to drink lots of tap water, when you need portable water, fill a re-usable high quality water bottle (i.e. Nalgene), read the Water Works quality reports, and insist that clean, affordable water be kept available to all residents