That bottled water you’re toting may seem like the perfect accessory for the blistering August heat predicted to continue this weekend.
But some say the environment is paying the price for your little piece of plastic convenience.
Across the country, politicians and environmentalists are leading a bottled-water backlash, saying it wastes oil to make and transport the petroleum-based plastic bottles, most of which ultimately end up clogging landfills.
With car pollution, deforestation and many other plastic products like diapers and soda bottles also on the environmental hit list, attacking bottled water may seem like a drop in the bucket — and the bottled water industry has argued that it’s being targeted unfairly.
Driving the backlash is that good water pours easily and cheaply from most Americans’ faucets — Chicago’s Lake Michigan water is considered some of the best in the country — so the waste generated by bottling water seems unnecessary and avoidable.
The furor comes after a staggering, decade-long rise in the popularity of bottled water that’s largely due to health-conscious Americans buying fewer soft drinks. Americans bought almost 30 billion bottles of non-sparkling water in 2005, double the consumption of 2002 and seven times that of 1995, according to the Container Recycling Institute, a Washington nonprofit. Illinois ranked seventh in the country last year for bottled water consumption, with each person in the state drinking about 21 gallons of bottled water in 2006 — a 48 percent increase over 2001, according to New York-based Beverage Marketing.
As plastic water bottles become ubiquitous, the anti-bottled water drumbeat grows louder.
San Francisco and L.A. have banned city-financed purchases of bottled water. New York has launched an ad campaign called “Get Your Fill” that sings the praises of tap water and gives residents a free stainless steel beverage container if they sign an online pledge not to buy plastic water bottles. Salt Lake City’s mayor has encouraged residents to drink from the tap. Ann Arbor has nixed bottled water at city events. And in June, the U.S. Conference of Mayors adopted a resolution — sponsored by the mayors of San Francisco, L.A. and Minneapolis — that calls for compiling information on the importance of municipal water and the contribution of bottled water to municipal waste.
Cook County could enter the fray next.
County Board Commissioner Mike Quigley, chairman of the board’s Environmental Control Committee, said he is in the preliminary stages of preparing an ordinance that would prohibit the use of county funds to purchase bottled water. He said he plans to propose the bill after Labor Day.
Quigley called bottled water “one of the great American failures” because we are paying — financially and environmentally — for a product already available virtually for free at our fingertips.
“I think it’s time for governments to start stepping up,” said Quigley, who represents the 10th District on the North Side. “We should appreciate that local governments across the region are often the largest purchasers of any item and move into a mode where we don’t purchase it ourselves.”
Whether Chicago will go that route remains to be seen.
There are no city policies in place or on the agenda to curb bottled water usage, said Sadhu Johnston, commissioner of Chicago’s Department of the Environment, who added that he personally tries to use tap instead of bottled water because plastic bottles create waste. The city targets larger and more toxic waste streams — like construction and food waste and discarded computers — and encourages people to avoid worse enemies of the environment, like cars, he said.
Yet Johnston acknowledges, “the more we can get people to drink tap water, the better,” especially because Chicago provides such good water. In a 2003 report that reviewed water quality in 19 U.S. cities, the Natural Resources Defense Council gave Chicago’s water the only “excellent” grade.
Mayor Daley said the focus should be on recycling plastic bottles.
“You need a good recycling program, and that’s what it’s all about,” Daley said when asked at a news conference this week if Chicago would consider a bottled water ban.
Problem is, Illinois residents recycled only 5 pounds of plastic bottles per person in 2000, while 20 pounds per person ended up in landfills, where space is at a premium, according to the most recent statistics from the Illinois Recycling Association.
Jim Lewis, general manager of Veolia Landfill in Zion, one of the largest in the Chicago area, said he’s always surprised to see how much recyclable material is thrown away when it could be put to better use.
“Plastics are made out of petroleum, so it’s an important natural resource we’re wasting,” Lewis said. Most plastic bottles can be recycled into fabric, fleece, new plastic bottles and myriad other products.
But recycling alone won’t make the problem go away.
Even a plastic bottle made from recycled materials rarely contains more than 10 percent recycled plastic — meaning 90 percent of the bottle has to come from virgin resources, including petroleum, said Mike Mitchell, director of the Illinois Recycling Association.
“Recycling may reduce the demand for landfill space, but it will not reduce demand for petroleum,” Mitchell said. “It becomes a sustainability issue.”
Another concern about bottled water is the gas used and pollution created to transport the water to stores, considering people can get water from their taps.
While a small percentage of bottled water purchased in the U.S. is lugged here from as far away as Fiji and France, domestic bottled water, which accounts for almost 98 percent of the U.S. bottled water market, requires shipping too.
The irony is that at least a quarter of bottled water comes from a municipal water supply — the same source as tap water. PepsiCo announced last month that its Aquafina water bottles soon would sport labels stating the water comes from a “public water supply.” Locally, Nestle’s Ice Mountain water is pumped from wells in the Great Lakes Basin in Michigan.
“One of the amazing things to me, from a Chicago perspective, is that we have this great resource coming out of the tap, and yet we’re paying for Lake Michigan water to be bottled and driven around the [southern part] of the lake to be sold here,” said Cameron Davis, executive director of the Alliance for the Great Lakes. “We’re supporting the trucking of it at a time when we should be reducing our carbon footprint.”
Some say concerns over plastic bottles are overblown.
All plastics that are created annually consume just 2 to 4 percent of America’s energy resources, and 60 to 70 percent of plastic containers are made from natural gas, not oil, said Rob Krebs, director of communications for the American Chemistry Council’s Plastics Division. Plastic is the best way to conserve resources, Krebs said, because it’s lighter and more compact than material like paper.
Meanwhile, the International Bottled Water Association, an Alexandria, Va.-based industry group, has struck back against criticism.
Last week, it ran full-page ads in the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle defending bottled water and highlighting the industry’s environmental stewardship.
Joe Doss, the association’s president and CEO, told RedEye that bottled water is not meant to compete with tap water but rather to provide a healthy alternative to people who want to grab a drink at the store. The industry promotes recycling and has reduced the amount of plastic in its packaging by 40 percent during the past five years, he said.
Bottled water should be treated like any other packaged food product, Doss said, and not carry all the blame for the world’s environmental woes.
“Trying to deal with this situation by focusing on the bottled water industry is not going to work,” Doss said. “If you’re going to be effective you have to have a comprehensive approach to managing the waste product in this country.”
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aelejalderuiz@tribune.com
