Sustainable Water on the Go? The Packaging Dilemma

Water is a glorious substance. We are mostly water, we humans. Water is the ideal drink for people, yet many of us in the so-called developed world forget to drink the stuff, opting for juice, milk, soft drinks, and the ubiquitous coffee. When we do drink water, it comes in packaging: plastic packaging that is full of embedded energy and petroleum products. We tend to use these water bottles once and then recycle them, although some reuse them and some throw the packaging away. It's good to drink water, but plastic packaging is a waste of scarce petroleum resources and energy. Is there a sustainable option?

First, let's talk about the bottle. No, not that bottle. The plastic one, the one that water comes in. Except that water doesn't need to come from a package, of course. It does come from the tap, from reservoirs, groundwater, and local springs. The US produces a giant lake of water every day, sixty million bottles of water. Of these bottles, thirty-eight billion end up in the landfill, their plastic packaging and valuable petroleum sitting there for eons to come. Perhaps one day we'll go to these landfill sites to extract the plastic bottles that they contain, since this packaging is a valuable resource. It's food as fuel, at least food packaging.

A number of bottled water companies have worked to offset the environmental impacts of their packaging by branding themselves as environmentally and socially sustainable in some way. Native Waters from Massachusetts bottles its spring water in containers that will degrade in landfills. A small step for packaging, but not necessarily a solution to the problem of the energy and materials it takes to make this packaging in the first place. For companies, spas and hotel chains, Aquahealth provides filters, sanitizers, and reusable bottles that look very chic, some of them similar to a wine bottle. These companies are making baby steps towards more sustainable water, but they're bumping up against a very large and much less than sustainable food industry.

I'm not asking you to stop drinking bottled water. I've used it myself in places where I knew that drinking the local water would make me ill, and I use it in our emergency kit. However, our obsession with plastic-packaged water has grown to epic and unsustainable proportions. Me, I'm in favor of the water fountain and the tap. Water fountains are water to go. In fact, I make regular stops at the public water fountains in our neighborhood. It's such a blessing to have water that is just there, ready to drink. Can you imagine what the world would be like if everyone had such a thing, with a reusable bottle to put that water in?