|
|
|
Bottled water industry can undermine progress towards safe water for all: UN
|
|
|
|
Top Stories |
 |
|
|
|
IANS | 18 Mar, 2023
The rapidly-growing bottled water industry can undermine progress
towards a key sustainable development goal: Safe water for all, says a
new United Nations report.
Based on an analysis of
literature and data from 109 countries, the report says that in just
five decades bottled water has developed into "a major and essentially
standalone economic sector," experiencing 73 per cent growth from 2010
to 2020.
And sales are expected to almost double by 2030, from $270 billion to $500 billion.
Released
a few days prior to World Water Day (March 22), the report by UN
University's Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health
(UNU-INWEH) concludes that the unrestricted expansion of the bottled
water industry "is not aligned strategically with the goal of providing
universal access to drinking water or at least slows global progress in
this regard, distracting development efforts and redirecting attention
to a less reliable and less affordable option for many, while remaining
highly profitable for producers."
Says Kaveh Madani, UNU-INWEH's
new Director: "The rise in bottled water consumption reflects decades of
limited progress in and many failures of public water supply systems."
When
the Sustainable Development Goals were agreed in 2015, he notes,
experts elsewhere estimated an annual investment of $114 billion was
needed from 2015 to 2030 to achieve a key target: Universal safe
drinking water.
The report says providing safe water to the
roughly 2 billion people without it would require an annual investment
of less than half the $270 billion now spent every year on bottled
water.
"This points to a global case of extreme social injustice,
whereby billions of people worldwide do not have access to reliable
water services while others enjoy water luxury."
The study quotes
surveys showing bottled water is often perceived in the Global North as
a healthier and tastier product than tap water -- more a luxury good
than a necessity.
In the Global South, sales are driven by the
lack or absence of reliable public water supplies and water delivery
infrastructure limitations due to rapid urbanization.
In mid and
low-income countries, bottled water consumption is linked to poor tap
water quality and often unreliable public water supply systems --
problems often caused by corruption and chronic underinvestment in piped
water infrastructure.
Beverage corporations are adept at
marketing bottled water as a safe alternative to tap water by drawing
attention to isolated public water system failures, says UNU-INWEH
researcher and lead author Zeineb Bouhlel, adding "even if in certain
countries piped water is or can be of good quality, restoring public
trust in tap water is likely to require substantial marketing and
advocacy efforts."
Bouhlel notes that the source of bottled water
(municipal system, surface, etc.) the treatment processes used (e.g.
chlorination, ultraviolet disinfection, ozonation, reverse osmosis), the
storage conditions (duration, light exposure, temperature), and
packaging (plastic, glass), can all potentially alter water quality.
This
may be inorganic (e.g. heavy metals, pH, turbidity etc.), organic
(benzene, pesticides, microplastics, etc.) and microbiological
(pathogenic bacteria, viruses, fungus and parasitic protozoa).
According
to the report, "the mineral composition of bottled water can vary
significantly between different brands, within the same brand in
different countries, and even between different bottles of the same
batch."
The report lists examples from over 40 countries in every
world region of contamination of hundreds of bottled water brands and
all bottled water types.
"This review constitutes strong evidence
against the misleading perception that bottled water is an
unquestionably safe drinking water source," says Bouhlel.
Water bottlers generally face less scrutiny than public water utilities.
Co-author
Vladimir Smakhtin, past Director of UNU-INWEH, underscores the report's
finding that acebottled water is generally not nearly as well-regulated
and is tested less frequently and for fewer parameters.
Strict
water quality standards for tap water are rarely applied to bottled
water, and even if such analyses are carried out, the results seldom
make it to the public domain."
Bottled water producers, he says,
have largely avoided the scrutiny governments impose on public water
utilities, and amid the market's rapid growth, it is "probably more
important than ever to strengthen legislation that regulates the
industry overall, and its water quality standards in particular."
According
to the report, the bottled water sector used 35 per cent of the PET
bottles produced globally in 2019; 85 per cent wind up in landfills or
unregulated waste.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Customs Exchange Rates |
Currency |
Import |
Export |
US Dollar
|
84.35
|
82.60 |
UK Pound
|
106.35
|
102.90 |
Euro
|
92.50
|
89.35 |
Japanese
Yen |
55.05 |
53.40 |
As on 12 Oct, 2024 |
|
|
Daily Poll |
 |
 |
Do you think Indian businesses will be negatively affected by Trump's America First Policy? |
|
|
|
|
|
Commented Stories |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|