ALEXANDRIA, Va.—The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) recently commissioned a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) study to determine the environmental footprint of the U.S. bottled water industry, which reveals bottled water has a very small environmental footprint.
Franklin Associates, a division of ERG, produced the LCI and prepared a report that quantified the energy requirements, solid waste generation, and greenhouse gas emissions for the production, packaging, transport, and end-of- life management for bottled water consumed in the United States in 2007. According to a 2008 Beverage Marketing Corporation report, total consumption of bottled water in the U.S. in 2007 was 8.8 billion gallons.
According to the reports findings, the environmentally aware actions of many bottled water companies, such as the use of more recycled PET (rPET) in their bottle production, increasing recycling rates, and enhanced light-weighting, have positively impacted the environmental footprint of the industry.
Click here to read the technical report.
