Bottled water "thousands of times worse" for the planet than tap water, scientists reveal

Bottled water is reportedly thousands of times worse than tap water, according to new research conducted by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), with three times as much water being used in the production of a plastic bottle as it can hold.

Bottled water consumption has sharply risen over the last few years due to several factors, from a lack of trust in public tap water systems, risk perception, and marketing by bottled water companies. But the new data suggests tap water may be more beneficial for public health.

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The data, which was published in the ScienceDirect journal and focused on Barcelona - home to around 1.5 million people - found that 60% of the sample consumed bottled water regularly.

The team chose to focus on a small area owing to marked differences between tap water quality between areas and wanted to go with as much available data as possible.

The study looked to gain data on three different types of drinking water: tap water, bottled water and filtered tap water.

They measured the effects of drinking water based on its "life cycle assessment", a metric used to analyse the environmental effects of a product over its lifespan. This includes the extraction of raw materials, manufacturing, disposal, transportation, distribution and use.

The researchers found, should the entire population of Barcelona switch to bottled water, the production required for bottled water would lead to 1.43 species lost per year and a cost of $83.3 million (€70.1 million).

This is approximately 1,400 times more impact in ecosystems and 3,500 times higher cost of resource extraction compared to the scenario where the whole population would shift to tap water.

However, ISGlobal's Cristina Villanueva, one of the authors of the study notes several subjective factors that dictate water consumption among the population.

“One such factor is the perceived presence of chemical compounds in tap water. While it is true that tap water may contain trihalomethanes (THM) derived from the disinfection process and that THMs are associated with bladder cancer, our study shows that due to the high quality of the tap water in Barcelona, the risk for health is small, especially when we take into account the overall impacts of bottled water”, she said.

However, it is unknown whether this same conclusion can be applied worldwide, owing to the differences in water quality.

The researchers found that these THM could have some effect on the population. They estimate an average lifespan loss of around 2 hours per person - 309 years overall - should everyone consume tap water over bottled water.

However, the myriad environmental effects would outweigh the potential health effects. This is especially true as water quality continues to improve over time.

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Cathryn Tonne, the report's other author, claims that using domestic filters can help reduce THM levels in tap water, as well as reduce its odour and improve the taste.

She said: "Filtered tap water is always a good alternative [to regular tap water]. Even though we didn’t have enough data to measure its environmental impacts fully, we know it is much lower than that of bottled water."

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