Kicking the bottled water habit
A growing number of high-profile restaurants across the country are serving free local tap water that is filtered on the premises instead of expensive bottled water. They include well-known establishments such as Alice Water’s Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, Mario Batali’s upscale Del Posto in New York City, and Dan Barber’s eco-friendly Blue Hill in Pocantico Hills, New York.
The restaurants are part of a “drink local” movement that benefits both the environment and their customers. By avoiding the environmental costs of producing and transporting bottled water long distances, not to mention the billions of plastic bottles dumped in landfills, these restaurants are adopting more sustainable business practices.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the markup on bottled water in Bay area restaurants is huge, making sales of bottled water a profit center for most restaurants. They can buy it for $1 or $2 a bottle, and sell it for as much as $7 or $9. So banning the bottles can mean a significant loss of revenues.
But substituting free, in-house filtered and carbonated water doesn’t add much expense either. At Chez Panisse, for example, a $400 carbonator, the size of a big toaster, and a water line connection, are all it takes. The carbonator is basically a tank of carbon dioxide that is injected into the water, creating fizzy bubbles. A plastic line runs from the carbonator to a tap at the bar, which is already connected to a reverse osmosis charcoal filtering system underneath the sink.
While restaurants like Chez Panisse make up a very small part of the bottled water market, they could trigger significant changes in consumer behavior over time. At Incanto, another San Francisco restaurant that features local, sustainably grown and harvested foods, bottled water was banned several years ago. Customers have gotten used to the filtered tap water, which is featured as a business plus on their website:
“Meals at Incanto begin with complimentary sparkling or still water because our local Hetch Hetchy water tastes great (we filter, chill and carbonate it before serving) and because serving our local water in reusable carafes makes more sense for the environment than manufacturing thousands of single-use glass bottles for someone to use once and throw away.”
IS BOTTLED WATER SAFER THAN TAP WATER?
Per capita consumption of bottled water in the U.S. has doubled in the last decade and is still going strong. On average, American consumers drink about 28 gallons of bottled water annually per person. One reason: many people seem to believe that bottled water is actually safer than tap water. But after a four-year review of the bottled water industry and the safety standards that govern it, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) concluded that there is no assurance that bottled water is any cleaner or safer than water from the tap.
When Consumer Reports last tested bottled water for contaminants in August 2000, we didn’t find a lot to worry about either.
In fact, “an estimated 25 percent or more of bottled water is really just tap water in a bottle – sometimes further treated, sometimes not,” says the NRDC. Indeed, Consumer Reports notes that two leading brands of bottled water in the US—Coca Cola’s Dasani and Pepsi-owned Aquafina come from municipal water sources.
WHO MONITORS QUALITY AND SAFETY?
Bottled-water quality is overseen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), whose standards for contaminants take into account the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) tap water standards, but the two standards aren't always identical. For example, the EPA requires that tap water be monitored for asbestos, while the FDA imposes no such requirement on bottled-water manufacturers, maintaining that the sources aren't likely to contain asbestos.
While bottled-water companies must hew to rules for sanitary production, some standards for bottled water are stricter than for tap, such as those for fluoride and lead. But some are not. Bottled-water companies aren't required to disinfect or test for parasites such as Cryptosporidium or Giardia—a requirement for city tap water. The FDA says that the sources of bottled water are unlikely to harbor the parasites.
WHY BAN THE BOTTLES?
Fossil fuels are used in the packaging of bottled water. The most commonly used plastic for making water bottles, polyethylene terephthalate (PET #1), is made from crude oil. “Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 cars for a year,” according to the Earth Policy Institute.
Experts calculate that transporting and packaging bottled water involves sizable energy costs. According to Dr. Gina Solomon, senior scientist at the NRDC, about 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2)—a major greenhouse gas—are emitted during the transportation of bottled water from France, Italy, and Fiji to the U.S.
Other experts note that the plastic materials used are generally recyclable, but there is a very low recycling rate for the bottles, so billions of them wind up in landfills. According to the Container Recycling Institute, a high percentage of plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or litter. Learn more about plastic recycling trends.
RELATED LINKS
Water filters: Buying guide 5/07
Union of Concerned Scientists: Is bottled water better? 6/07
Container Recycling Institute: Water, Water Everywhere 2/07
Earth Policy Institute: Pouring resources down the drain 2/06
U.S. EPA: Ground water and drinking water Web site
Food and Water Watch Web site
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