Energy implications of bottled water
By P. Gleick, H. Cooley. 2009
211 citations recorded by the source corpus.
As bottled water use continues to expand around the world, there is growing interest in the environmental, economical, and social implications of that use, including concerns about waste generation, proper use of groundwater, hydrologic effects on local surface and groundwater, economic costs, and more. A key concern is how much energy is required to produce and use bottled water. This paper estimates the energy footprint required for various phases of bottled water production, transportation, and use. We do not develop a single comprehensive life-cycle energy estimate because of differences among water sources, bottling processes, transportation costs, and other factors, but we quantify key energy inputs necessary for site-specific assessments. We also apply these inputs to three site-specific examples of the energy required from production to the point of use: local bottled water produced and used in Los Angeles, water bottled in the South Pacific and shipped by cargo ship to Los Angeles, and water bottled in France and shipped in various ways to Los Angeles. For water transported short distances, the energy requirements of bottled water are dominated by the energy used to produce the plastic bottles. Long-distance transport, however, can lead to energy costs comparable to, or even larger than, those of producing the bottle. All other energy costs—for processing, bottling, sealing, labeling, and refrigeration—are far smaller than those for the production of the bottle and transportation. These data can be used to generate specific estimates for different sources, treatments, and delivery options.
Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Water Science and Technology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a172236f644bb69b1a359764755bdd081ff7ea99
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In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
In Water Science and Technology
Citations in the corpus
- Energy and water autarky of wastewater treatment and power generation systems (2015, background): “005 MJ/L for treatment and distribution [14,15].”
- Mindful consumption: a customer-centric approach to sustainability (2011, background): “More recent entries in this category include disposable cameras, watches and umbrellas, and above all, the disposable plastic water bottles, arguably one of the biggest new source of harmful waste around the world (cf. Gleick and Cooley 2009).”
- Exploring dietary guidelines based on ecological and nutritional values: A comparison of six dietary patterns (2014, background): “The most effective option in light of health, GHG and LU is to drink tap water (Gleick and Cooley, 2009).”
- Exploring Beliefs About Bottled Water and Intentions to Reduce Consumption The Dual-Effect of Social Norm Activation and Persuasive Information (2015, background): “Furthermore, in 2011, it took more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) to produce the amount of bottled water required for U.S. consumption—as energy is needed for packaging, transportation, and refrigeration (Gleick & Cooley, 2009).”