The Demise of Bottled Water?

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The Demise of Bottled Water?

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A decade ago, Jim Hairston was a lonely voice crying out in the wilderness. Few people heeded his warnings about the pitfalls associated with bottled water, a product that at the time was beginning its steady ascent to the forefront of American consumer consciousness.

As Hairston saw it — and still sees it — bottled water was exacting a heavy toll not only on people’s pocketbooks but also on the environment. Equally bad, in his view, was the effect it could have turning consumers away from ordinary tap water, which Hairston considers to be one of the nation’s greatest scientific achievements in the past century.

Hairston, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System water quality expert and Auburn University professor of agronomy and soils, spoke to anyone willing to listen, though the only receptive audiences at the time were fellow water experts at southern land-grant universities and members of the American Water Works Association. He also amassed a trove of information about the effects of bottled water on his massive water quality database, hosted on Alabama Cooperative Extension System’s Web site.

But except for the people in his profession, few listened — until now.

Today, those sleek, shiny cylinders against which Hairston has railed for so long have not exactly fallen on hard times, but they do seem to be losing some of their luster. In some quarters, they’re even labeled public enemy No. 1.

"In the last few months, bottled water — generally considered a benign, even beneficial, product — has been increasingly portrayed as the environmental villain by city leaders, activist groups and the media," writes Alex Williams in the Aug. 12 edition of the New York Times.

Why the sudden change of fortune? Hairston suspects spiking energy costs have played a big part in the products’ recent, but in his view, entirely justified, demonization.

Research by the Washington, D.C.-based Earth Policy Institute reveals that it takes roughly 1.5 million barrels of oil simply to make the bottles for U.S. consumption. That doesn’t count the additional millions of barrels required to transport these products from one corner of the world to another.

Some environmental watchdogs also are stepping up efforts to persuade citizens and companies alike to banish the products. A few prominent restaurateurs, including the Berkeley, California-based Chez Panisse, already have dropped the products from their menu selections.

Some individuals also are enlisting in the effort, posting fliers and buttonholing anyone willing to listen about why bottled water poses a threat to the environment, the Times reports.

Many are asking the same question Hairston has asked for the past decade: Why should consumers shell out billions of dollars for plastic bottles when all of this money could be invested in maintaining and upgrading a distribution system that has provided Americans with cheap, safe tap water?

For that matter, why do we transport the equivalent of entire lakes by air year in and year out when safe, affordable water typically is a close as the nearest faucet?

Why, indeed, some have asked, especially considering that so many of these products are little more than bottled tap water.

For his part, Hairston has no idea what effect his efforts had in focusing public attention on the issue. What he does know is that questions about bottled water submitted to his Web site began as a trickle 5 years ago but have swelled to a steady stream within the last few years.

Bottled water makers apparently are running scared. Last week, the International Bottled Water Association debuted full-page newspaper advertisements urging Americans to recycle, not to abandon, their used bottled water products, stressing that "when we drink any beverage, it’s likely to come out of a bottle or a can."

But they don’t stop there. Bottled water manufacturers also contend that in place of their products, Americans inevitably would substitute bottles or cans of so-called "bottled candy" — juices or soda.

But as Hairston has asked time and again, why couldn’t that substitute be a reusable bottle of tap water — a frequent sight a generation ago, before bottled water gained market traction?