The Footprint Of Your Bottled Water

First of all here you are a report about the footprint of bottled water consumption: click here. Second, when we buy something I think we should take into account the point of departure of the product so that way the thought would become part of what is called "responsible consumption".

Among the products with an important footprint is not only the bottled water but also off-season fruit. We could say that eating the off-season fruit has become second nature but if we take into account that such fruit has been brought from Equator to Spain for example, that could be something bad as it has surely been brought by plane (a really important machine for generating CO2 emissions). If we speak in general terms, a ship emits 0.002 Kg of CO2 per kilometre and ton transported. The same distance and weight for a train is 0.069, 0.11 for a truck and 2 for the plane. It is, for the same distance a plane pollutes 1000 times more than a ship, I don't know if you get the idea... Because of this I raise, the spanish government plans are focused on promoting the railway network and sea routes. Time will tell.

And speaking about bottled water another question would be: why not using glass bottles as we did some years ago? I don't know if in other countries has happened but here in Spain, a twenty years ago, it was something usual to get a discount for returning an empty glass bottle when you bought a new one (filled up with the product of course). It is true that the majority of the bottled water which is sold is bottled in plastic and because of that we should get in contact with the company which makes the product asking for a change  respect to the bottling. The glass bottles are 100% recyclable, in other words, we could use the same material for ever in practical terms (the quantity of missing material is trivial compared to plastic) and the quantity of energy and material necessary in the process is far less than making plastic bottles. The moral today would be: The more glass-bottled water you use the tinier your footprint will be.

And finally, please, keep in mind this is not an apology for consuming bottled water, keep in mind we should drink tap water but just in case we need to buy bottled water for any reason, be responsible and opt for glass bottles as far as possible of course.

And now a nice story to summarise the impact of plastic bottles on our environment and pockets.