In March 2023, the United Nations University released a report entitled “Global Bottled Water Industry: A Review of Impacts and Trends”. The main conclusions were:
- Bottled water has developed into a major and essentially standalone economic sector in just around the past five decades. Based on the analysis of 109 countries, the study estimates that the global bottled water market is currently worth US$270 billion producing some 350 billion litres. This market is growing faster than any other food market, and is projected to reach and exceed US$500 billion by around 2025–2030.
- Bottled water sales and consumption are the highest in the Asia-Pacific region followed by North America and Europe. The Global South combined (Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean) represents 60% of global sales.
- On a country level, the largest market is the USA with total revenue of around US$64 billion, followed by China (almost US$45 billion) and Indonesia (US$22 billion). These three countries combined constitute almost half of the global bottled water market. Most other national markets are small compared to the top 10–12 countries (USA, China, Indonesia, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Germany, Thailand, Mexico, Thailand, Italy, Japan) in both total sales in dollars and total consumption in litres. Singapore and Australia are identified as the largest consumers of bottled water per capita.
- Treated water appears to be the largest component on the market by volume, while other natural waters appear to generate the most profit. Egypt has the fastest-growing market of treated bottled water (with over 40% annual growth). In addition to Egypt, seven other countries from the Global South are in the top-ten fastest-growing markets for treated water (Algeria, Brazil, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, India, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia).
- Egypt and Algeria are also among the top-ten fastest-growing markets for bottled mineral water, although the three Asia-Pacific countries (South Korea, India, and Japan) have higher growth rates in this category.
- In the Global North, bottled water is often perceived as a healthier and tastier product than tap water; it is, therefore, more a luxury good than a necessity since they have often reliable and good quality public drinking water supply. In the Global South, the bottled water market develops primarily due to the lack or absence of reliable public water supply along with increasing urbanization with associated limited infrastructure for water delivery.
- Marketing campaigns by the bottled water industry aim to promote the concept of bottled water “purity” and to discredit tap water for its poor quality. The perception that bottled water is safer than tap water needs to be challenged. Beverage corporations are adept at marketing bottled water as a “safe alternative” to tap water by drawing attention to isolated public water system failures. At the same time, bottled water rarely faces the same rigorous public health and environmental regulations as tap water.
- Scientific evidence backing claims of bottled water purity and safety is limited. At the same time, examples from tens of countries from every region of the world illustrate cases of inorganic, organic and microbiological contamination of hundreds of bottled water brands of all bottled water types. Evidence clearly indicates that bottled water quality can be compromised either by the origin of water or by industrial processes that may potentially impact human health. Hence, while there are, indeed, also numerous examples of poor water quality in public domestic drinking water supply, it is hardly justifiable to claim that bottled water is any “safer”.
- Bottled water producers have, by and large, managed to avoid the kind of scrutiny imposed by government standards and regulations that public utilities must adhere to. As the bottled water market grows, it is probably more important than ever to strengthen legislation that regulates the industry overall and its water quality standards in particular.
- Water withdrawals by the bottled water industry can lead or contribute to the depletion of groundwater resources in areas of water procurement for bottling in many parts of the world, which makes this an issue of global scale and relevance as over two billion people globally rely on groundwater as their primary water source. In certain cases, groundwater withdrawn for bottled water production may not even be replenishable.
- The absence or weakness of water regulation policies in many countries, particularly those of the Global South, together with bottled water market growth in such countries may increase the pressure on local water resources, with little or no contribution to sustainable and reliable long-term drinking water supply.
- The world currently generates around 600 billion plastic bottles and containers, which converts to some 25 million tonnes of PET waste. Most of this waste is not recycled.
- Bottled water has clear links with several SDGs, but the strongest ones are obviously with universal access to drinking water—SDG target 6.1. While global progress toward this target is significantly off-track, expansion of bottled water essentially works against it or at least slows this progress down, distracting attention and resources from public water supply system development. Expansion of bottled water may adversely affect investments and the role of the state in long-term public water supply infrastructure development and improvement.
- A comparison of estimates of global bottled water sales with the estimated needs to finance the progress to SDG 6.1 reveals that less than 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.
- Bottled water producers have a financial incentive to expand their markets. They also have resources for marketing campaigns. To counter negative perceptions of tap water, civil society groups and NGOs should be encouraged and financially supported to run advocacy campaigns. Private companies can be expected to resist attempts to implement any measures that would increase their costs, but they will respond to consumer demands. Advocacy campaigns can point to water quality and resource depletion issues. They can also highlight cases of successful provision of high-quality tap water and point to the positive actions of companies such as steps to improve the transparency of operations, access to data or actions to enhance plastic recycling.
