H2O ... Tap into it

In the UK we spend £1.5 billion a year on 2.17 billion litres of bottled water. This equates to 15% of the soft drinks market and is projected to grow to 21% by 2008. I was once one of the 26m people in the UK who consume bottled water on a regular basis, however I have as part of my carbon reduction plan replaced this with tap water.

But Why?

The main reason is that bottled water requires a large use of energy, from the process of bottling, through the requirement of a glass or plastic bottle, then the huge food transport cost through carbon emissions. Petcore figures from 2004 said that Europe wide we recycled just over 30% of PET bottles. However, this is on the increase with a 47% increase over the last two years.

I have decided to take Evian (my favourite brand of bottled water) and the brand leader in the UK with a 14.3% market share or 310m litres in sales per year. Evian is an imported mineral water from several sources near Évian-les-Bains, a few kilometers to the east of Thonon-les-Bains along the southern shore of Lake Geneva.

So if I was to fill a lorry (or truck) with Evian and bring them to my home town of Belfast, how much Co2 emissions would be produced directly from food transport. Using Google maps to gauge the driving distance, note this is the most direct route available from source to Belfast, United Kingdom. It equates to 1115 miles. Taking the load as 5.29 tonnes (the average load on a UK lorry, Transport Statistics Great Britain 2002) or the equivalent to 5290 litres of Evian. The journey would emit 1936kg of Co2 (or 366g of Co2 per litre of Evian) for the one-way journey, one-third of food transport lorries are empty, so to assume that the vehicle may be empty on its return this could increase the Co2 emissions even further.

This is however only an assumption, if other forms of transport were used (preferably train / boat) this would result in lower emissions per litre. Over 1.5 billion bottles of Evian are sold every year in 125 countries worldwide, as far away as Hong Kong (just over 5000 miles).

Whilst Evian carry out over 300 quality checks per day, the quality of bottled water is similar to that of tap water. So next time your tempted by bottled water, imported coca-cola or beers consider its food transport cost.

H2O ... Tap into it





NB: The figures in this article were changed on Tuesday 23rd April 2007 due to a mistake in the source. The emissions were based per tonne but were taken as the load. This then increased the carbon emissions by 5.29.