full article on http://theflipside.com.au/bottledwater
by Lisa

"The average cost of a bottle of water is much, much more than what it seems. It incurs a number of hidden and not so hidden costs. First, the direct cost to your wallet: Crude oil is mined from deep underground, transported half way round the world, refined into petrol for our cars, transported again under stringent safety precautions, taxed at over 50%, sold at a profit and is still, at $1.45 a litre, cheaper than Australia's top-selling litre of bottled water (FuelWatch, 2008). A litre of Mount Franklin will cost you a whopping $3.67 a litre [1]; more than double the cost of fuel.

Secondly, there are potential health costs. Bottled water is regulated and sold under Australian National Food Standards Code, the regulations of which are more relaxed than those overseeing the stringently treated water that streams from our taps (ABWI, 2004). In fact, one could argue that public concern over toxins in the tap water is primarily, not because tap water in fact is a more problematic source but instead, that municipal water scares are highly publicized whereas bottled water recalls pass behind the wool like most other packaged food recalls - carefully and quietly, specifically so as not to infringe upon future sales. For the same reason, up until recently, health risks of toxins leaching out of plastic bottles almost entirely escaped the media. In fact, sifting through a few statistics, it seems as though water bottling companies are doing an amazing job at getting us to think exactly what they want. Last year Australians spent at least $385 million on bottled water, which represents 250 million litres or some 410 million average-sized bottles (Sydney Morning Herald, 2007). Bottled water is a relatively new big business market for companies like Coca-Cola (of which Mount Franklin is a product) and Pepsi who package and sell what would otherwise be free. With markets up 42 per cent since 2002 and on the increase, the public is increasingly choosing bottled water over tap water (Sydney Morning Herald, 2007). Not only that, but companies have also begun targeting children; after all, recruiting bottle-drinkers at a young age secures a ‘healthy’ market for the future. (Mount Franklin, 2007).

Finally, and perhaps most alarmingly, there are some serious environmental costs associated with every step of the bottled water process. The industry is often titled ‘an environmental nightmare' or ‘ecological disaster', and with good reason. The pumping, filtering, treating, packaging, shipping, shelving, refrigerating and disposing or recycling of bottled water in Australia alone is the cause of over 450,000 barrels of oil and roughly 60,000 tonnes of CO2-e per year. The Swiss Gas and Water Association published their findings in 2005 that bottled water has 100 times the environmental impact of tap water (Jungbluth, 2005). Landfill sites collect up to 80% of plastic water bottles because we throw them away under the exact same premise they were purchased - wherever is most convenient to us. The problem being that there is no ‘away' to throw them to. Mountains of landfill are constantly on the upward move, creating toxic runoff into the soil and rivers of our planet - the very place we retrieve our drinking water from. This is a perpetual cycle of unsustainable consumption and waste and Australia is particularly vulnerable.

... If we can begin to understand human consumption patterns and population growth levels as being directly linked to taking more and requiring more resources from the earth, we can redesign our lives and construct a more rational model than that of the present.

The Bottled Water Costs the Earth project was spun out of the notion that this movement will start from the bottom-up in a groundswell of public refusal to continue consumption patterns linked to ecological destruction and that government's role in all of this will be to respond to public opinion in a democratic manner of open debate and discussion. The anti bottled water campaign on campus aims to promote the use of tap/fountain water in place of habitual bottled water consumption. The initiative is being backed by the Murdoch guild of students and is now working behind the scenes to move campus in a more sustainable direction. The hope is for the university to realize that this is a fantastic opportunity for Murdoch to take a bounding leap as a model for sustainable campuses in Australia.

Campaigns like this are sprouting up all over the developed world in various forms from university campuses in America and grade-school districts in Canada, to municipal office buildings in Manly Council Australia (www.manly.nsw.gov.au). The government initiative in New South Wales is a good example of how governments can and should take responsibility for sustainable water distribution. This applies in particular to the case of the developing world where roughly 1.1 billion people are both without access to clean and safe drinking water and could not even afford to consume bottled water if they wanted to pitch their part into the growing mountains of landfill (United Nations Development Program, 2006, p. 205). Furthermore, the issue of water shortages and privatization of local water sources exacerbates all other development issues from education to infant mortality, malnutrition and economic stagnation. Buying bottled water supports the privatization initiative. For the moment, it is not the clean water that is lacking here in Australia but the political will. If we fail to act however, the reverse could be the result. The problem is one of mismanagement and lack of responsibility. America, for example, spends a collective $100 billion U.S. on bottled water annually when they have perfectly clean water streaming directly from their taps for 1/1000th of the cost. It would take just a fraction of this to reach the Millennium Development Goals target of halving the proportion of people who lack reliable and lasting access to safe drinking water by the year 2015 (Aslam, 2006) yet, here in the luxurious world of the rich, we squander our resources in a way that will affect the entire global hydrological system. The health of the planet's water and the people who depend on it lies in our hands now. We choose whether to act or not o this one. Your choice not to buy bottled water is your vote. The message is simple, bottled water costs the earth."