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*The UK bottled water industry was rocked by an unprecedented wave of adverse media attention in mid-February 2008. This focused its largely misinformed judgments on the quality, cost and environmental impact of bottled water. Even Britain’s Environment Minister, Phil Woolas, joined in the scathing attacks by describing bottled water as daft because tap water is so good. *

Fortunately, the disproportionate and misguided criticism was challenged on many occasions by several respected guardians of the bottled water industry. water innovation (issue 47) collates the views of such experts to address the validity of five notorious claims made about bottled water.

1. Bottled water doesn’t taste any better than tap water

Evidence to support or oppose such a claim is relatively subjective, but the jury is still out on how well municipal waters perform against bottled water brands. The assertion that tap water is better than bottled water came to the boil following a blind taste test at the end of 2007. A judging panel comprised of a respected wine correspondent, two top restaurant sommeliers and three beverage critics from Decanter magazine sampled 23 bottled water brands along with tap water from Thames Water, the UK’s largest municipal water supplier.

The tap water was rated third, beaten only by Waiwera Infinity’s eponymous premium bottled water brand from New Zealand and Vittel from Nestlé Waters. However, if the best trained palates in food and drink couldn’t tell top bottled waters apart from plain tap water, is there any justification to cry wolf?

The reality is that many consumers choose bottled water in preference to tap water. This choice may be based on taste or the reassurance that, in the cases of natural mineral water and spring water, the water has not been chemically treated.

Furthermore, the discrepancy lies with impurities - such as iron, lead and limescale - or additives including chlorine that can make tap water taste less pleasant. Bearing in mind the ageing infrastructure of water pipes in the UK and the possible contamination between source and delivery, one can understand why water utility customers generally rate tap water below bottled water. High lead content in tap water is a particular concern as many pipes containing lead are privately owned, so regulations and standards are sometimes difficult to achieve.

One high profile client, the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), has reportedly gone to the trouble of fitting special hydrotaps, each costing over €1,500 ($1,860) on all eight floors of its London headquarters because civil servants dislike the smell and taste of tap water.

A spokesperson for Zip, the hydrotaps’ maker, was not surprised that Defra had chosen to use the company’s products. He said: “People just don’t like the smell or taste of tap water. It’s the chlorine they use.”

Meanwhile, a closer investigation of the Decanter blind water tasting event has revealed that water was taken directly from a resident’s tap from Kensington with good quality pipes. Although not reflective of tap water across London, the sample was at least sourced further downstream than the treatment plant.

However, a spokesperson for Decanter magazine told water innovation that the tap water sample was slightly chilled and that a different verdict may have been delivered if all the waters had been drunk at a higher temperature.

* 2. Buying bottled water is a waste of money * The most expensive brand tested in the Decanter water challenge was priced at €65 ($100) a litre and came in at 18th place. When Thames Water costs £0.06 per litre, tap water is thousands of times cheaper than the most expensive bottled brands and also apparently better tasting than many of them. So is it any wonder that the media suggest that bottled water consumers are overcharged for the products they receive?

Yet, while the average Briton uses 150 litres of mains water daily, only two to five litres is used for drinking. The rest is used for cooking, cleaning, washing and toilet flushing. Therefore, when comparing prices, it is worth noting that mains water has multiple uses. Bottled water on the other hand is only used for the provision of pure drinking water.

It is also important to consider that the price paid for tap water is set by a Government agency, has benefited from taxpayer subsidies for many years and is not liable to VAT. It may not include the true commercial cost of water provision or fair inclusion of externalities such as environmental impacts.

Conversely, the price paid for bottled water is set by the end retailer of the product - not the water producer - and is subject to 17.5% VAT in the UK. Needless to say, the British Government is being lobbied to positively discriminate in favour of healthy drinks, such as bottled water, by putting them on the same zero VAT rating as food generally.

A counter argument in the bottled versus tap water pricing debate surrounds the issue of leakage. The UK water utilities leak more water in less than a day than the UK’s total annual consumption of bottled water (2.27 billion litres).

The UK water utilities have argued that improving leakages would be uneconomical. Yet, in certain parts of the UK, notably the South East, the pressures on water resources are acute. To address acute water shortages in certain parts of the UK, significant capital investment would be required that would ultimately have to be borne by the mains water customer. Thus, if the major environmental impact of leakage were to be fully addressed, this would significantly impact mains water pricing.

Free market forces are admittedly not perfect but it could be argued that they more accurately reflects the true cost of drinking water in developed economies. The focus of criticism seems to be the premium price tags of luxury branded waters sold through horeca channels. However, more affordable brands are widely available at retail stores and cheaper discount brands of bottled water sold through wholesalers are often overlooked completely when bottled water is attacked as a needless luxury.

More importantly, bottled water does not compete with tap water by virtue of its product formulation. Tap water must contain an active disinfectant at the point of dispense while natural bottled waters must be micro-biologically safe to drink at source. In terms of its packaging, distribution channels and product characteristics, bottled water competes with other bottled drinks.

Rather than casting unfounded assertions on bottled water, it would be better if the media devoted more attention to the positive aspects of hydration and health. With 60% of the UK population predicted to be obese by 2050, it is counter-productive to discourage bottled water consumption. As communities attempt to tackle childhood obesity and curtail the dramatic rise of binge drinking and yob culture, those who describe bottled water as 'morally unacceptable' clearly hold a blinkered view.

You can’t take a tap out with you, so more consumers are swapping sweetened, high calorie beverages for bottled water, which can be consumed in adequate quantities to rehydrate the body without adding calories to the diet. Consumers love the portability of bottled water and the guaranteed purity it offers. These are the main reasons for its success.

* 3. Producing bottled water is a waste of water*

About one billion people lack clean water for drinking and 2.6 billion lack sanitation, according to UN estimates. Water experts predict that the situation will worsen in many parts of the world in the coming decades due to several factors including urbanisation and population growth, increasing food production, changing consumption patterns, industrialisation, pollution and climate change.

The water usage footprint of 1 litre of bottled water is understood to be around 3 litres, compared to 140 litres for a 12.5cl cup of coffee or 190 litres for a 20cl glass of apple juice. While there has been no in-depth study to measure the embedded water footprint of bottled water, its water utilisation is the lowest of all beverages, since there are no agricultural water inputs and limited water processing inputs.

The bottled water industry has also made giant strides in the improvement of production technologies in bottling plants. For example, Nestlé Waters UK reduced water consumption for its flagship brand Buxton by 17% in 2006, while increasing production by 11%.

In 2007, the company made a €13 million ($20 million) investment in a highly efficient production line, which resulted in further reductions in water used during production.

This is merely one national example of good conservation being implemented. There are countless other initiatives across the world which we have featured in previous issues, such as the recent UN accord signed by Nestlé and Coca-Cola to manage water use at manufacturing plants more efficiently.

Under the UN programme, called the CEO Water Mandate, the company executives pledged to take immediate action to address the emerging global water crisis. Together they launched a project designed to help companies better manage water use in their direct operations and throughout their supply chains.

There is huge potential for the private sector to make a real, positive and lasting difference in protecting and preserving fresh water resources by making progress in six areas: direct operations, supply chain and watershed management, collective action, public policy, community engagement and transparency.

As mentioned earlier, a single day’s mains water leakages are greater than the total UK bottled water consumption in a full year. Undoubtedly, it’s a shame that drinking water is used for gardening or to flush the toilet. Worse, water is drawn from a tap for a short while before consumption to avoid less pleasant water which has been left standing in lead pipes. The water utilities provide an excellent product and a good service with a historically under funded infrastructure.

Yet the issue of water conservation is broader than attacking a provider of water or pointing the finger of blame for environmental woes at different industries. All of the business community will need to partner with governments, policy makers and public action groups to address water shortages and sanitation. Ultimately, everyone will need to work together and play their part in supporting water efficiency practices to protect a water legacy for current and future generations.

4. Bottled water production contributes toward global warming

Latest estimates place the bottled water industry’s carbon footprint at around 200,000 tonnes of carbon, some 0.1% of total UK carbon emissions.

Danone Waters UK & Ireland uses a combination of rail, sea, and road transport to move products from the sources where they are bottled in France to UK customers’ warehouses. The company reports it uses the maximum possible amount of electric rail routes in France, which offer highly efficient large scale loads for goods transportation. Since 2005, Danone has increased the proportion of miles its products travel by train from 59% to 70% of the total distance.

Meanwhile, more than 90% of the bottled water produced by Nestlé Waters globally is consumed in the country of origin. Nestlé Waters’ UK international brands use rail and shipping as their primary mode of transport.

This has been a major component of significant reductions in the carbon footprints of Evian and Volvic. On a worldwide basis, Danone has achieved a 30% reduction in the average weight of its PET bottles over the last 15 years. In the last three years alone, the average weight of Evian and Volvic bottles reduced by 11%. In addition to ongoing projects to reduce the weight of packaging materials, Evian and Volvic will progressively introduce recycled PET into the manufacture its bottles during 2008.

Approximately 75% of bottled water consumed in the UK is produced in the UK. Most imports are from West Europe, mainly France, Ireland, Italy and Belgium. Exotic long distance imports such as Fiji are negligible. Thus, despite common misconceptions to the contrary, bottled water often travels much smaller distances than most other food and drink products.

Natural Waters of Viti, the company which manufactures Fiji Water, said its water only comes by ship which was scheduled to make voyages with or without the company’s bottled water on board. The company has committed to reducing actual carbon emissions 25% by 2010 and is offsetting 120% this year.

It is important to note that PET bottles are 100% recyclable. Unfortunately, the UK has one of the lowest consumer recycling rates in Europe. Government landfill waste reduction targets tend to be defined by weight, which means that heavier materials (glass, for example) provide more attractive areas of focus for the waste management industry. Soft drinks manufacturers are currently exploring opportunities to work with local authorities on initiatives to improve PET recovery and recycling.

Lightweighting has been occurring since PET bottles were produced in the beverage market and companies continue to roll out lighter bottles year on year. A reduction of 10% of bottle weight for the whole range of PET bottles in the UK would achieve a reduction of PET usage of 20,000 tonnes and a reduction in CO2 production of 7,200 tonnes, according to Nextek.

Recent press debate over the environmental impact of bottled water versus tap has ignored the embedded carbon footprint associated with the vast scale of the water collection, purification and distribution of public water supplies, plus the collection, treatment and recycling of sewage necessary to maintain supplies.

The renewal of much of the UK’s water utility distribution pipes with MD PVC plastic pipes is in itself creating a carbon footprint associated with the unavoidable use of petro-carbon based products. The repair of leaks creates its own ‘repair miles’ and its own carbon footprint from the use of vans, generators, floodlights, drills, diggers, road repair materials etc. The carbon footprint of water leaked from the public supply is said to be almost 450,000 tonnes of carbon each year. This is over twice that of the bottled water industry.

5. Bottled water doesn’t play a beneficial role in society

This is a fairly easy myth to debunk. It is a matter of record that, in national emergencies, the UK bottled water industry provides an essential back-up to the water utilities’ emergency supply arrangements.

Last summer, Britain experienced its wettest summer in living memory. Emergency workers fought to hold back overflowing rivers as the worst floods in 60 years engulfed towns and villages, mainly in central England. At the height of the flooding, hundreds of thousands were left without drinking water and bottled water was relied upon as an inherently safe and portable solution.

The benefits of bottled water are not limited to applications when there are disasters such as floods. Besides providing a living for around 20,000 people in the UK, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest bottled water manufacturers have a strong social conscience.

Some critics are particularly concerned about water being imported to Britain because of the potential damage to supplies in other countries. However, even bottled water producers that face intense scrutiny have a compelling sustainability story to tell.

Fiji Water has been working with the Pacific Water for Life Foundation to fund water projects in over 100 local communities each year. Many of the typhoid cases that happen in Fiji occurred after severe flooding took place following a cyclone.

Safe drinking water is just one part of the equation. Developing proper sanitation and infrastructure is critically important as well. Fiji Water provides thousands of cases of water a year to local villages in Fiji who have been hit by cyclones or flash flooding to provide immediate access to clean, safe water.

The company responded to the suggestion that exporting water somehow reduces access to this recious resource by reiterating that the export revenue from Fiji Water is paying for the expansion of water access at a pace that Fiji’s government could never achieved. If Fiji Water didn’t bottle the water, the underground flow would simply run into the ocean and fewer people in Fiji would benefit from access.

Companies active in the UK bottled water market - notably Danone and Nestlé - are committed to measuring, improving and reporting on corporate responsibility. Additionally, the bottled water industry is at the forefront of offering positive ethical actions as an integral part of its business.

For example, there is the Volvic 1 litre for 10 litre initiative by Danone Waters UK & Ireland, which provides mechanised wells in across Africa; Highland Spring’s fundraising partnership with Breast Cancer Care; and initiatives from British bottled water companies Frank Water, Global Ethics (with its charity brand One) and Waterbrands (Thirsty Planet) to fund clean water projects in India and Africa from profits.