The bottled water industry positions its product as natural, healthy and in tune with the environment; their products display pictures of pristine mountain tops and beautiful natural springs. And it's working: Australians spend more than half a billion dollars a year on bottled water. In 2008, the sale of bottled water increased by 10 percent.

While profiting from the sale of a commodity that is available for free and is an essential human need is disingenuous in itself, the bottled water industry is now going to great lengths to assert its product as environmentally friendly in the face of growing environmental concern.

According to the Australasian Bottled Water Institute (ABWI), the peak industry association for Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific Islands, "when it comes to environmental stewardship and container safety, the bottled water industry is part of the solution". This is despite the fact that the bottled water industry extracts groundwater and spring water from the environment, packages it in plastic and transports it across the globe so we can drink it and throw the bottle away.

The ABWI states that "we partner with other beverage producers, and environment authorities to encourage and build upon the kerbside recycling infrastructure. Consumers need to be further educated about recycling and have access to recycling points for collection of all beverage containers and other recyclable goods".

While the plastic used to bottle beverages is of high quality and in demand by recyclers, only 36% of PET plastic bottles are recycled in Australia (Boomerang Alliance). Keep in mind that most recycling services only recycle PET 1,2 or 3, so if your bottle has a higher number on the bottom, it may not be recycled even if it makes it to the recycling bin.

In America, bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year (Lighter Footstep) and over 80% of bottles are thrown away (Food and Water Watch). Plastic waste is now at such a volume that vast eddies of current-bound plastic rubbish now spin endlessly in the world’s major oceans. In 2008 the international media reported on the "world's garbage dump", a "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean growing at an alarming rate and that now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States. This represents a great risk to marine life, killing birds and fish which mistake our garbage for food.

The ABWI states that, "to single out bottled water packaging is to ignore the fact that today's society demands and relies upon packaged food and drinks". Well, there's a reason to continue to develop an industry based on packing something in plastic that you can get out of a tap!

Even if you do recycle your plastic water bottle, the high energy cost of the extraction and production industries used to make the bottle are not ameleorated. According to the Bottled Water Alliance in Australia:

• Producing and delivering a litre of bottled water can emit hundreds of times more greenhouse gases than a litre of tap water.
• According to British research, drinking one bottle of water has the same environmental impact as driving a car for a kilometre.
• Department of Environment and Climate Change estimates that 200ml of oil is used to produce, package, transport and refrigerate each litre bottle of bottled water. As a result, at least 50 million litres of oil is used in the manufacture and distribution of bottled water in Australia every year.
• Australia’s annual use of bottled water generates more than 60,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions - the same amount that 13,000 cars generate over the course of a year.

THE ALTERNATIVE
The tap. If you don't want to drink straight tap water, there are filters that can be easily attached to the tap or a jug. Instead of buying bottled water to take with you during the day, keep a reusable bottle with you and fill it up from water filters and other places where water is publicly available.