ISLAMABAD: A new United Nations report reveals that bottled water masks the world’s failure to supply safe water for all and can slow the sustainable development.

The rapidly-growing bottled water industry can undermine progress towards a key sustainable development goal of safe water for all. Based on an analysis of literature and data from 109 countries, the UN report says that in just five decades bottled water has developed into “a major and essentially standalone economic sector”, experiencing 73 per cent growth from 2010 to 2020, and sales are expected to almost double by 2030, from $270 billion to $500 billion.

Released ahead of the World Water Day (March 22), the report by UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health concludes that the unrestricted expansion of the bottled water industry “is not aligned strategically with the goal of providing universal access to drinking water or at least slows global progress in this regard, distracting development efforts and redirecting attention to a less reliable and less affordable option for many, while remaining highly profitable for producers”.

The report says providing safe water to roughly 2 billion people without it would require an annual investment of less than half the $270 billion now spent every year on bottled water.

“This points to a global case of extreme social injustice, whereby billions of people worldwide do not have access to reliable water services while others enjoy water luxury.”

Bottled water industry can undermine progress towards the key SDG

In mid- and low-income countries, bottled water consumption is linked to poor tap water quality and often unreliable public water supply systems. Beverage corporations are adept at marketing bottled water as a safe alternative to tap water by drawing attention to isolated public water system failures, says UNU-INWEH researcher and lead author Zeineb Bouhlel, adding that “even if in certain countries piped water is or can be of good quality, restoring public trust in tap water is likely to require substantial marketing and advocacy efforts”.

According to the report, “the mineral composition of bottled water can vary significantly between different brands, within the same brand in different countries, and even between different bottles of the same batch”.

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2023