Germany, bottles racks

Not far from Braunschweig, in the north of Germany, an avalanche of mineral water, beer, fruit juice, and soda containers sprawls over a wholesaler’s warehouse lot. In the global beverage market, bottled water comes in far ahead of the competition. Once bottled, the most basic of drinks meets with growing success: worldwide consumption increased by 70 percent between 2002 and 2007. To hold the 23 billion gal (87 billion L) of bottled water distributed around the world in 2007 required millions of tons of plastic, a by-product of oil refining. That same year, the United States was the leading consumer of bottled water by volume; France ranked eighth. At 68 gal (257 L) per inhabitant per year, the United Arab Emirates rank first on the individual scale; France ranks fifth, with a little more than 35 gal (132 L) per inhabitant per year. In countries where water is unsanitary (in Africa, Latin America, Asia), bottled water is truly useful. But this is not the case in the West, where tap water is sanitary and offers an equally satisfying alternative, and one that is more environmentally sound. Four-fifths of these plastic bottles are not recycled but pile up in dumps and eventually damage the environment. It has been calculated that the manufacturing, packaging, and transportation of a bottle of water consumes a quantity of oil equivalent to one-quarter of its contents.