Last year, the United States "New York Times" recently published reports accusing the bottled water of consuming oil and polluting the environment. It called on Americans to abandon bottled water and drink tap water. According to reports, the United States consumes as much as 4 billion gallons of bottled water annually. It is estimated that the production of these plastic packaging alone will consume 1.5 million barrels of oil each year, enough to supply 100,000 cars for a year. Americans also import large quantities of pure water from France, Fiji, and Italy each year. The energy consumed during transportation and the carbon dioxide emitted are even more striking.
So the Chinese media also looked to the bottled water in China. The China Youth Daily article pointed out that China is the third largest bottled water consumer in the world. Data show that the bottled water market in China is increasing at an annual rate of nearly 30%. By 2010, the Chinese will consume 10 million tons of mineral water a year. , equivalent to 60% of the current US 4 billion gallons of annual consumption. Some commentators have pointed out that the reason why Chinese people love drinking bottled water is because they are extremely uneasy about the safety of tap water. If the safety of tap water is improved, people will not buy bottled water.
If so, people in the United States and Europe, where tap water safety is much higher than China, will not consume so much bottled water, so this view is not worth refuting. Why, then, did the New York Times not target Coke and other soft drinks? Because of the harm to the body, carbonated beverages are much more serious than bottled water. When it comes to wasting in the manufacturing process and polluting the environment, fruit juice drinks are also more serious than bottled water. The author believes that bottled water accounts for a large share of the beverage market and may be an important reason. In Mainland China, according to statistics from 1983, the production of carbonated beverages represented by Coke accounted for 80% of the total amount of beverages; and by 2005, carbonated beverages accounted for only 22% of the total volume of the beverage market, and the production of drinking water and juice was stable. The top two in the market. Another reason seems to be that the New York Times believes tap water can replace bottled water.
The main reason why people are willing to drink bottled water is that they are easy to carry, buy, and cheap. Indeed, bottled water is much more expensive than tap water, but it is still the cheapest compared to other beverages. The second reason is safety. Chinese people who drink bottled water at home are a minority after all, and when they go out, people generally choose bottled water for health reasons.
As for the "self-carrying water" campaign initiated by New Yorkers, the author thinks that it is unlikely to be promoted in China. A bottle of water is still quite heavy, and it is inconvenient to carry it around, especially for the elderly, women and children. In fact, the real waste is not the consumption of bottled water in the manufacturing and transportation process. A bottle of water is really wasted if it is not drunk. This is what we really should pay attention to.
Author: Shen Ruo-yu