An interesting infographic:

The facts about bottled water

Several fun facts from the infographic include:

1) Consumption in the United States: “8.6 billion gallons of bottled water.” There are approximately 300 million people in the U.S., so it works out to about 29 gallons per person per year.

Bottled water typically comes in 16 ounce or half-liter bottles, so that’s 232 bottles per year, or roughly one per weekday.

2) “The price of bottled water is up to 10,000 times the cost of tap water.”

In Cary, NC, tap water costs about a penny per gallon. So that’s 1/8th of a cent per 16-ounce serving. The cheapest bottled water at BJ’s (a giant warehouse store with bulk pricing) is 15 cents per 16-ounce bottle. So bottled water costs 120 times more than tap water in the best case. If you pay $2 for a bottle of water at the airport, then bottled water is 1,600 times more expensive than tap water. And at the airport you drink from the drinking fountain for free.

Note that if you drink tap water at home, you also need to consider the cost of the cup or container, and the cost of cleaning the cup or container for reuse. So the 10,0000 estimate in infographic sounds high. But there can still be a pretty big difference in price between bottled water and tap water.

Penn & Teller (below) note that Americans spend $4 billion per year on bottled water.

3) “It takes three times the amount of water to produce the bottle as it does to fill it.”

Penn & Teller did a great episode on Bottled Water. [note - given the name of their show, one might expect the occasional expletive. Please do not click into the video if you are offended by expletives.]:

The Truth About Bottled Water

4) “The NRDC conducted a comprehesive four-year scientific study of 1,000 brands of bottled water. Incredibly, the results showed that one third of the bottled waters violated their own industry standards for water quality.”

5) “75% of the people chose the taste of New York City tap water over bottled water.”

See also this note on plastic pollution:

[[[Jump to previous fun fact - Fun facts about beer – America’s favorite way to consume alcohol]]]