I had been thinking recently about waste reduction and the practice of buying water in small, single-use plastic bottles. Much of the literature on that is contradictory, or simply makes no real sense, so I wanted to share my observations.

An outfit called GoPure has an interesting blog that contains a kind of synopsis of both verifiable facts and a lot of what I see as rubbish in its own right. What can be verified is the claim from The Guardian that, as of 2017, we were already using some 5 Billion single use plastic water bottles every year, and that Forbes has noted that 90% of them are not recycled.

That, I will argue, is already enough to warrant a move away from single-use plastic water bottles. My issues are with the additional arguments about the relative healthiness of bottled water vs. water straight from the tap.

Water, of course, only comes to us from a few sources. Lake water (reservoirs), or groundwater (either springs or drilled wells) being the bulk of it. That’s true whether the water is used by a municipality, a family from their own well, or a water bottling company. In every case, the water is then tested and/or treated to ensure purity before we drink it.

The literature then gets a bit muddied, as it were, about how well or poorly the bottlers do the purification, and the potentially negative health effects of the plastic bottles themselves. In the end, I found no credible evidence to support the theory that reputable, mainstream bottlers fail to put clean water in their bottles. Some are enhanced with minerals that might or might not actually provide any additional health benefits, or that might or might not improve the taste, if for some odd reason, the taste of plain water is not good enough for someone without artificial enhancement.

The next argument against plastic is that it leaches bad chemicals into the water. My readings have been unclear about how much is involved here, or how quickly, but I see no reason to believe that it is an instantaneous process unless one needs it to be so in order to support the notion that the bottles are hazardous.

What does make some sense is the idea that, reusing the plastic bottles might be a problem because, if they are not cleaned, well enough, they could harbor various germs and viruses. I tend to minimize that threat because we don’t usually share those sorts of things anyway, and the problem would be the same in any reusable container that was not properly cleaned between uses. That’s the little secret of reusable containers that is usually overlooked. They need to be carefully cleaned between uses. If that is not done — and I find it difficult with some of the tops designed to protect against spills, and not all are dishwasher safe — then I would see the reusables as possibly more unhealthy than single use.

So, what’s the take-away here? It’s that I see neither tap water nor bottled water being any safer or more dangerous than the other. What’s dangerous to our immediate health is failing to clean any container properly between uses. What’s dangerous to the environment, and our long-term health, is the likelihood of the single-use bottles ending up in the environment. Plastic bottles are among the easiest, and most valuable materials to recycle, but 90% of them still find their way into the environment. We need to avoid that result very actively, and that is what demands avoiding single-use plastic bottles of water.

The Recycle Bin is a weekly column on what to recycle, what not to recycle, and why, in Brunswick. The public is encouraged to submit questions by email to brunsrecycleinfo@gmail.com. Harry Hopcroft is a member of the Brunswick Recycling and Sustainability Committee. This column is a product of his own research.

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