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Bottled Water

Make Everyday Bottled Water Free Day!

Manufacturing13.7 billion Gallons in 2017— overall bottled water volume

PET plastic-Polyethylene terephthalate

Microplastics-breakdown of plastic in water

Making a water bottle creates four times its weight in greenhouse gases.

Pollution130 million water bottles end up in BC landfills annually.

The North Pacific Gyre is an area of floating plastic garbage bigger than British Columbia.

Plastics breakdown into smaller pieces, impacting aquatic life.

The bioaccumulation of toxic emissions impacts the whole food chain.

Is Convenience Worth it?

Health Not a healthy alternative—Bottled water contains many pollutants, including fertilizer and other industrial chemicals.

The plastic in bottles leaches micro plastics and other metals into your water.

Under CIFA testing is minimally annually.

Money Down The Drain!!

25% of water sold is reprocessed tap water.

Soft drink companies spend billions on marketing bottled water.

Think Before You Drink!

It takes 100 ml of crude oil to produce, fill, and transport a

500 ml water bottle.

Canadians throw away over 3 million tonnes of plastic waste every year.

Unclean recycled items end up in the landfill.

Only 10% of recycled plastic is reused, the rest goes into landfill.

Crisis in Canada to find places to send plastic for recycling.

Reuse vs Recycle.

PSI19 0178

Impacts of bottled water

Things you can do as a teacher

• Show the film, The Story of Bottled Water, by Annie Leonard to your class and discuss the ideas she raises. www.storyofstuff.org/unbottle-water

• Share the DVD: Flow: For Love of Water with your class.

• Organize a classroom debate/discussion about water privatization, the right to water, or community concerns about the local watersheds.

• Put a pitcher of water and glasses in your classroom.

• Make posters which direct students to the nearest water fountain or explain the impacts of bottled water.

• Find out if your school has a beverage exclusivity agreement? If so, which company are you committed to and what’s the contract expiration date? What choice will you make when the agreement expires?

• Do a facilities survey to find out what percentage of your water fountains and sinks deliver cold, clean water in a pleasant environment? Find the ratio of students to water station. Post the results.

• Create bottled water free zones with other students and teachers. Find places where everyone will commit to not drink bottled water— a classroom, the hallway, the gym, and even the cafeteria.

• Pledge to drink water from the tap. Host an event where individuals can make a “toast to the tap” and take the pledge!

• Hold a fundraiser—sell stainless steel water bottles with your school logo or school-created art on them.

• Collect all the water bottles left in the school for a week and make a public art project out of them to demonstrate the amount of waste created. Towers of empty bottles will illustrate the level of pollution and why bottled water deserves no place in our schools.

Please reuse this poster each year

Economic

The price of a litre of gas is often less than the price of a litre of bottled water. Unlike bottled water, however, gasoline is taxed creating revenue that could be used to finance social services.

In Canada, 25% of bottled water sold is reprocessed tap water. Much of this water is sold by large cola manufacturers.

In the case of reprocessed tap water, people are being sold something they have already paid for through their municipal taxes—quality tap water.

The bottled water industry pays little or no fees for water from groundwater, streams, aquifers, and municipal sources. Unlike other industries such as forestry, mining, oil and gas, in most jurisdictions bottled water companies are not obligated to pay a fee (such as a royalty fee) or tax on the extraction of the resource.

For soft drink giants PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, revenues from bottled water per unit outstrip soft drinks.

The bottled water industry has spent billions on marketing bottled water.

Environment The average 500 ml polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottle requires 11% of its volume in crude oil to manufacture. When filling and transporting are included, this percentage can rise to between 16% and 28% oil.

Along with their use of fossil fuels, PET bottles generate more than four times their weight in greenhouse gases.

The manufacture of PET resin that is used to make water bottles releases at least two cancer-causing substances into the environment.

In 2007, over 130 million plastic-beverage bottles went to BC landfills (a 247% increase since 2002).

Social In some parts of the world, water is already privatized. Water service cut offs and prepaid water metres are examples of how privatizing water can cause access to water barriers.

When this happens health can deteriorate, daily tasks become more burdensome, and people go thirsty. This has more impact on those marginalized by class, race, and gender.

Large beverage corporations (such as PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Nestlé to name a few) have aggressively pursued contracts in schools knowing that capturing the youth market for bottled water is bound to have long-term payoffs.

Health

Access to clean, safe drinking water should be recognized as a human right. Lack of access to clean drinking water can have serious health consequences.

Peer-reviewed scientific studies have raised concerns with the quality of bottled water. Concentrations of contaminants such as arsenic, mercury, bromide, lead, and E. coli bacteria, have been found in bottled water samples.

Since 2000, there have been 29 recalls of 49 bottled water products by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Five of these have been made public and were recalled due to bacterial or chemical contaminants.

In Canada, the quality and safety of tap water is primarily a provincial/territorial or municipal responsibility. There are also federal guidelines for Canadian drinking water quality that set maximum allowable concentrations for microbiological, chemical, and radiological substances found in water that are known, or thought to be, harmful to human health.

Impacts of bottled water