I personally thing bottled water is generally pretty unnecessary and really wasteful to transport but I can’t help think the actual amount of water given people are drinking it not watering plants or showering with it is relatively small?
If you are bottling water, you are effectively removing it from the local “water system” with no chance of it ever replenishing the source.
Irrigation wells are not ideal either, and may be comparable in terms of ground water impact as bottling plants.
These draw tremendous amounts of water. The water table drops quickly in this scenario with a slow rate of replenishment. There’s also the possibility of contaminants leaching into the aquifer when there is no hydraulic pressure to push back.
My province is an island in the middle of an ocean, so infiltration of personal wells (ie for houses) with salt water is an issue when the water table is low. There is no quick fix for this either. Personal use should trump industrial use.
[0] https://azpbs.org/horizon/2022/06/saudi-water-deal-threateni...
There's not a whole lot of risk that the Seine will start flowing through the US
The "local" clouds also usually follow a pattern, this is why my local mountains get snow replacing every year, which is the source of my local rivers
However a bottling company could easily ship bottled water to a location that is likely never going to return to the local water table. Ever heard of Fiji brand water?
Where did the rain cloud get the water? It evaporated, likely from the ocean.
How did the water get into the ocean? It flowed down from lakes into rivers etc.
The local water table might fall, but the water itself is hardly local unless you're drilling for it.
There’s an equilibrium that’s achieved in a given watershed with local weather patterns. There might be ebbs or flows over the course of a year, but it’s reliable and predictable, and can be used sustainably.
If local weather patterns change and there’s a significant strain on a watershed, the water table will drain to a level that’s not recoverable within a human lifespan.
Water table https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_table
Watershed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watershed_management
Sounds like the perfect solution to sea level rise caused by melting glaciers. Just bottle it all up.
I can see it now "Every bottle of water sold fights you dealing with climate change!"
/s
For all the ice on land that melts into the ocean raising the sea level, take an appropriate amount of seawater and freeze it back onto land.
That might be too difficult though; maybe instead we can replace all of the oil underground with water. It's all underneath us anyways so just leave the hole open and water will naturally pool down there.
You do have pump the water in under pressure though, just letting it pour down the hole will not work since rock is more dense the water. Imagine you were standing on a sponge in the shower, the sponge will not absorb much water since you are squishing all the pore spaces closed.
The question isn't if farming is technically worse on a global scale, it's whether each individual aquifer can sustain its output.
It opens with a mother talking about how she uses bottled water to bathe her child, because the tap water is polluted.Then it goes on to say that residents don't like that Nestle gets to bottle water in the area while their tap water sucks.
I don't see how these two points are related.
This sounds like a problem of incompetent politicians and officials that can't maintain water infrastructure. If anything they should be thankful companies like Nestle exist so that there's at least some source of clean drinking water for them since the city seems incapable of providing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Nestl%C3%A9_boycott
N.B. Nestlé sold their bottling operations in these USA, and no longer owns Arrowhead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrowhead_Water
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/01/children-wo...