Irish water has been at the centre of the public conscience since the first threats of charges were made. What about bottled water though?
The Irish Times reports that Irish consumers spent €76.5 million on bottled water last year. In volume by litres, Irish people buy more water than soft drinks.
If you buy just one bottle a day, at an average cost of €1.21, you're spending €441.41 every year, on water.
Bottled water is 2000 times more expensive than tap water, but the cost is not only to your pocket. The environment takes a hit every time you take a bottled sip. It takes three litres of water to manufacture one-litre of bottled water, 1000 years for a bottle to biodegrade and the production bottled water emits hundreds of times more greenhouse gases than tap water.
The
World Health Organisation reports that in the developed world we spend more on bottled water than it would take to save the 1.6 million people who die in the developing world from water contamination every year. One in eight people in the world do not have access to clean, contaminated water on a daily basis.
The popularity of buying water in Ireland has been attributed to a change in lifestyle in the last thirty years and increasing awareness and fear of fluoride in the tap water. Bottled water was once the luxury of the wealthy, it is now a weekly purchase by 43% of Irish households.
Bottled water has often been seen as being cleaner, purer than tap water, however such claims have
been contested, as the plastic that contains disposable bottles of water can leach chemicals like DEHA, a possible human carcinogen, and benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), a potential hormone disruptor into the water.
Warnings have come too about reusing disposable bottles, which so many of us do, because the plastic is porous and with each gulp of water you are likely to take in a bundle of bacteria too.
Might be about time to buy a filter and a reusable bottle.
