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Woolworths Head Office Bans Bottled Water
Dear Colleagues
As more and more information on climate change and water scarcity becomes available, it gets harder and harder to ignore the call to make small but important changes to our lifestyles.
Recently I came across a study on the energy impacts of drinking bottled water instead of tap water. The study (see highlights below) shows that from start to finish bottled water consumes up to 2 000 times more energy than tap water.
Combine this with the expense of over 100 000 bottles consumed at head office in the last year and you will understand why I have found it necessary to place an immediate ban on supplying bottled water to employees at company expense.
Please join me in making this building a bottled water free zone.
Regards
Ian Moir
Woolworths CEO
Note:
- Bottled water will still be available for sale to individuals from the shop but it will no longer be ordered for office meetings.
- In its place, the catering team will supply jugs of water and reusable glasses.
- Water filters have also been installed on all pause areas to allow you access to cold water. The water quality has been tested by independent experts and was found to be excellent.
Purely expensive. The cost of bottled water adds up, according to a new energy analysis.
Drink Up, Energy Hogs
ScienceNOW Daily News
Talk about an energy drink. The first comprehensive and peer-reviewed energy analysis of a bottle of water confirms what many environmentalists have charged. From start to finish, bottled water consumes between 1100 and 2000 times more energy on average than does tap water.
Bottled water consumption has skyrocketed over the past several years. In 2007, some 200 billion litres of bottled water were sold worldwide, and Americans took the biggest gulp: 33 billion litres a year, an average of 110 litres per person. That amount has grown 70% since 2001, and bottled water has now surpassed milk and beer in sales. Many environmental groups have been concerned with this surge because they suspected that making and delivering a bottle of water used much more energy than did getting water from the tap. But until now, no one really knew bottled water’s energy price tag.
Environmental scientist Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Oakland, California, and his colleague Heather Cooley have added up the energy used in each stage of bottled-water production and consumption. Their tally includes how much energy goes into making a plastic bottle; processing the water; labelling, filling, and sealing a bottle; transporting it for sale; and cooling the water prior to consumption.
The two most energy-intensive categories, the researchers reveal in the current issue of Environmental Research Letters, are manufacturing the bottle and transportation. The team estimates that the global demand for bottle production alone uses 50 million barrels of oil a year. Gleick and Cooley found that drinking an imported bottle of water is about two-and-a-half to four times more energy intensive than getting it locally, often outweighing the energy required to make the bottle.
All told, Gleick estimates that U.S. bottled-water consumption in 2007 required an energy input equivalent to 32 million to 54 million barrels of oil. Global energy demand for bottled water is three times that amount. To put that energy use into perspective, Gleick says to imagine that each bottle is up to one-quarter full of oil.
2 Responses to “Woolworths Head Office Bans Bottled Water”
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I think this is fantastic, well done Ian!
Employees may be annoyed for a while, but in no time they’ll get used to drinking tap water. Going green sometimes feels like a schlep, but the reality is it’s so easy to make it a habit.
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