Lee Scott and bottled water

Lee Scott of Wal-Mart says, "If the customer wants bottled water, the customer is going to get bottled water." But where does zero packaging waste come in? What's sustainable about bottled water? How about everyone use an old QT cup and get tap water?







Here is the retort from the environmental perspective about bottled water.

More and more environmentalists are beginning to question the purpose of lugging those heavy, inefficient, polluting bottles all over the Earth. The parent organization of the World Wildlife Fund, the Switzerland-based World Wide Fund for Nature, argues strongly that the product is a waste of money and is very environmentally unfriendly. Co-op America concludes: “By far the cheapest—and often the safest—option is to drink water from a tap. It’s also the most environmentally friendly option.” Friends of the Earth says, “We might as well drink water from the tap and save all this waste.”

The WWF argues that the distribution of bottled water requires substantially more fuel than delivering tap water, especially since over 22 million tons of the bottled liquid is transferred each year from country to country. Instead of relying on a mostly preexisting infrastructure of underground pipes and plumbing, delivering bottled water—often from places as far-flung as France, Iceland or Maine—burns fossil fuels and results in the release of thousands of tons of harmful emissions. Since some bottled water is also shipped or stored cold, electricity is expended for refrigeration. Energy is likewise used in bottled water processing. In filtration, an estimated two gallons of water is wasted for every gallon purified.

When most people think of bottled water, they probably envision the single-serve plastic bottle, which has exploded in popularity and is now available almost anywhere food products are sold. The WWF estimates that around 1.5 million tons of plastic are used globally each year in water bottles, leaving a sizable manufacturing footprint. Most water bottles are made of the oil-derived polyethylene terephthalate, which is known as PET. While PET is less toxic than many plastics, the Berkeley Ecology Center found that manufacturing PET generates more than 100 times the toxic emissions—in the form of nickel, ethylbenzene, ethylene oxide and benzene—compared to making the same amount of glass. The Climate Action Network concludes, “Making plastic bottles requires almost the same energy input as making glass bottles, despite transport savings that stem from plastic’s light weight.”