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What's in your water
Healthy bottled water isn't so good at all, at least not for the folks in the area where it's bottled...
Bottled mineral water- whatever the brand – usually costs around €1.20 a litre. That's more expensive than petrol (although petrol is catching up!).
But these mineral waters claim to have a lot of benefits over ordinary tap water. They're marketed as being pure, free from chemicals, filtered through mountains, lovingly and carefully bottled at the pure mountain spring source high up in the Alps.
Unfortunately, that's not true in the case of many brands. These companies often use bottling methods that have devastating effects on the environment, and draw their water from places that are, in reality, about as far away from the Alps as you can get.
Bottled mineral water, even the ‘bottled at source' water, is often drawn from the same sources that local authorities use to supply water to communities, towns and cities.
In India, Coca-Cola owned companies have extracted so much water from some areas that the area's water table has actually dropped, leaving some wells dry and causing serious water shortages for locals. In August 2005, in India, the Kerala State Pollution Control Board ordered the Coca Cola owned bottling plant to cease production immediately, due to high levels of toxic chemicals detected around the plant. In September 2005, The Kerala State Government went to the Supreme Court of India to defend the rights of locals to the groundwater, over 500,000 litres of which was extracted by the plant per day. In addition, Pepsi has also come under fire in India for its bottling operations.
Thankfully, many local communities in India have begun to take a hard line with Coca-Cola and other bottlers and campaigns against the companies are gathering momentum.
The creation of the actual bottles themselves leave toxic by-products in the air, ground and water, while the extracted water is shipped to Europe and the USA. These plastic bottles then account for hundreds of thousands of tonnes of landfill a year and of course, are not biodegradable.
Who would have thought it? Healthy bottled water isn't so good at all, at least not for the folks in the area where it's bottled. And the single-use bottles don't do our environment any good either, usually ending up in our landfills for the next 10,000 years or so. But there is a way to have bottled water that's cheaper, just as healthy and doesn't cause nearly as much damage to the environment, either here or abroad.
Fill up your favourite empty mineral water bottle with tap water, which is over 500 times cheaper, subjected to much stricter levels of cleanliness and is certainly no less healthy than the ‘bottled at source' water.
And if you really want to make a difference, buy water that you can be sure was bottled locally or in Ireland (there are plenty of these brands) and when you've re-used the bottle enough times, put it in a recycling bank.
By: Andrew Gibbons
The opinions of writers featured on SpunOut.ie do not necessarily reflect the views of the SpunOut.ie team or those of Community Creations. We try to give everyone a chance to have their opinions heard but we are not responsible for inaccuracies contained within these.
