Previous Shop Talk: Green (Money) in Washington and Green Plans Elsewhere |
Next Guest Blogger: A Khaki-Pants-and-Yellow-Shirt Approach to Campus Design |
July 18, 2008, 06:46 AM ET
Drinking Bottled Water? You May Be Rich—and Dumb
From a sustainability standpoint, bottled water is problematic. Shipping water around the planet in single-serving packages is expensive and energy-intensive. According to The New York Times, which cited an Earth Policy Institute report, it takes about 1.5 million barrels of oil to make the water bottles Americans use in a year, and only 23 percent of those bottles get recycled. “If you choose to get your recommended eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend up to $1,400 annually,” the Times said. “The same amount of tap water would cost about 49 cents.”
Canadians, who are sometimes ahead of Americans in their environmental sensibilities, have started looking down on bottled water—particularly at colleges. The July 21 issue of Maclean’s, the Canadian news magazine, says efforts to ban bottled water are starting up at the University of Manitoba and the University of Ottawa, among other places.
But here’s the curious thing: The Maclean’s article cites a recent report on bottled water by Statistics Canada, a government agency that tracks the Canadian population, its economy, and its culture. “The report found that nearly a third of Canadians use bottled water at home. This preference increases with income, suggesting it’s a luxury good. Yet curiously, the use of bottled water declines with education.”
In other words, if there is a bottle of water sitting next to your computer, you may be rich—and dumb.
The findings of the study were puzzling to those at StatCan, as the agency is sometimes known. The wealthy and the educated usually have parallel consumption habits, but apparently not in bottled water. “The greatest consumers of bottled water in Canada are those with substantial incomes but no more than high-school education,” Maclean’s said. “University graduates drank the least amount of bottled water in the country, regardless of income.”
Reusable vessels for tap water have had their own problems recently, particularly after Health Canada released a study in April saying that Bisphenol A—BPA, an integral ingredient in the plastic bottles made by Nalgene—may cause difficulties in the endocrine system. (Those Canadians—trouble for bottlers everywhere!) Nalgene—whose bottles at one time were seen stuffed in or hanging off of every student book bag—switched to a BPA-free bottle-making formula. Now, however, it seems that bottles by Sigg or Klean Kanteen are part of the paraphernalia of eco-conscious students.
Add Your Comment
Commenting is closed.