KATE EMERY: Why bottled water is a complete scam and a triple eco-crime

Bottled water has always been a scam.

Now that it’s a potentially dangerous one, is the world ready to be weaned off the plastic teat that’s clogging landfill, driving demand for fossil fuels and costing us — on average — $580 a year?

For those who don’t make it their business to be up-to-date on breaking water news, the short version is that a major study published in January found popular brands of bottled water contain much more and much tinier bits of plastic than previously thought.

These so-called nanoplastics belong in the blurb of a Michael Crichton novel because they can migrate through tissue into the bloodstream, which apparently is less than ideal.

A separate study, published in February, found microplastics — the big sister to nanoplastics — in every one of 62 human placentas tested by researchers. The most common was polyethylene, which is used to make plastic bottles and bags.

Should the prospect of nanoplastics and microplastics rampaging through our bodies prove to be a serious health concern — both have been linked to plenty of scary health outcomes but the consequences of this kind of exposure aren’t yet fully known — I won’t say I told you so. That would be wrong.

I will, however, allow myself a moment to hope that the days of mass consumption of bottled water could be numbered.

My beef is not with water. It would take masochism to a whole new level to hate the molecule that makes up 60 per cent of my body and 70 per cent of the planet.

What I loathe is the way that a free, environmentally-friendly and, for most Australians, easily available resource has been commercialised into something that’s both expensive and bad for the environment. Unless you’re living somewhere tap water is dangerous (genuinely dangerous, not “TikTok influencer told you fluoride is poison” dangerous) there’s just no reason for it.

Short of being halfway up Mount Everest — or in hospital — most people would view the offer of a $3 bottle of oxygen as a scam. So how, why and when did flogging bottled water become so normalised?

I’m so glad I asked.

Blame the 18th century, which is when commercially-sold bottled water took off, with the promise that certain springs or spas had therapeutic properties.

That shonky bit of wellness BS — you can draw a through line all the way to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop empire — saw bottled water stocked in pharmacies, before moving into supermarkets in the 1960s and, eventually, into plastic bottles.

Bottled water is now so popular that Australians spend, on average, $580 each on it every year. We not only have among the world’s most expensive bottled water, we also have the second-highest consumption rate in the world, per capita.

Bottled water is a triple eco-crime. Firstly, because producing a one-litre bottle can take up to 3 litres of water and one litre of oil.

Secondly, because those water bottles need to be transported. And, thirdly, because there’s a good chance each bottle winds up in landfill for hundreds of years.

Bottled water companies aren’t really selling water but convenience: the convenience of not having to carry a reusable bottle, drink a glass before going out or wait to get home. The success of the industry is the failure of our collective laziness.

It’s also being fuelled by society’s obsession with hydration.

I don’t know who decided we all need to drink eight glasses of water a day but I suspect they have shares in Big Toilet Paper. And why are there more than two dozen mobile phone apps designed to track my daily water consumption?

It’s easy to snigger at 18th-century dupes who thought chugging a bottle of spring water might cure their syphilis.

But we’re just as gullible if we believe that mass consumption of bottled water is a harmless necessity, a modern life tonic and even a wellness must, rather than a victory of marketing over common sense.