Bottled water masking world’s failure to supply ‘safe water’ for all, says report

The rapidly growing bottled water industry is helping mask a crippling world problem: the failure of public systems to supply reliable drinking water for all, a review report published in the run-up to the United Nations 2023 Water Conference next week, said.

Supply of reliable drinking water is a key Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target. But, the expansion of the bottled water industry works against achieving it or at slowing progress towards it.

This, it does by adversely affecting investments and the role of the state in long-term public water supply infrastructure development and improvement, according to Global Bottled Water Industry: A Review of Impacts and Trends.

The report cited an example. It compared estimates of global bottled water sales with the estimated needs to finance the progress to SDG 6.1.

Half of what the world pays for bottled water annually at present would pay to provide clean and long-term public water supply for hundreds of millions of people without it, according to the document.

“The rise in bottled water consumption reflects decades of limited progress in and many failures of public water supply systems,” Kaveh Madani, director, UN University Institute of Water Environment and Health (UNU INWEH), was quoted as saying in the report.

UNU INWEH, which is part of the UN University, and McMaster University, Canada, compiled the report. The document is based on an analysis of literature and data from 109 countries.

Dollars, litres and regions

The rise of the bottled water industry has been nothing short of meteoric.

In just 50 years, it has developed into “a major and essentially standalone economic sector,” experiencing 73 percent growth from 2010 to 2020. Sales are expected to almost double to half a trillion dollars by 2030.

The report has mapped and ranked the top 50 countries in the world by total and per capita bottled water sales both in dollars and litres. The current global bottled water sales are estimated at almost $270 billion and 350 billion litres.

The Asia-Pacific region constitutes about half of the global bottled water market, and the Global South countries together make up about 60 percent.The United States, China and Indonesia combined comprise half of the global market, according to the report.

– Down to Earth