Bottled water is a bitch!

Over at Triple Pundit they have this guy, Pablo, who is a sustainability engineer. Pablo has a regular column, “Ask Pablo” where he takes submitted questions about every day items and calculates out their true cost or impact. His articles are fantastic at showing the full picture of items, he really is brilliant. Anyways, this weeks article was about the true impact of bottled water and it was stunning.

This example uses Fiji water, the 2nd best selling water in the USA. In short, it takes 26 times as much water to make the bottled water as there is water in the final product. It also uses just about an equal ratio (85%) of fossil fuels to content and just for kicks it also adds over a pound of emissions. This calculation is before it is distributed inside the country. So add on to that warehouse, delivery vehicle, etc etc. Basically, bottled water is absurdly inefficient.

For an understanding of the magic behind the curtain of our normal daily lives I highly recommend Pablo’s column.

- shawn

[source: triple pundit | ask pablo]