Is bottled water the best drink?
Apart from transportation, infrastructure and salaries, “Nestlé pays little for the product it bottles — sometimes a municipal rate and other times just a nominal extraction fee,” the Bloomberg report said.
“This includes the scientists, engineers, biologists and others who work for our company,” it said.
Americans now drink more bottled water than every other soda combined, in an effort to avoid sugar and diet soda.
Bottled-water consumption in the US hit 39.3 gallons per capita last year, while carbonated soft drinks fell to 38.5 gallons, marking the first time that soda was knocked off the top spot, according to recent data from industry tracker Beverage Marketing Corp.
In the four decades since the launch of Perrier water in the US, consumption of bottled water surged 2,700 percent, from 354 million gallons in 1976 to 11.7 billion gallons in 2015, according to the International Bottled Water Association.
(Representatives from the bottled water industry contend that the origin of these EDCs were likely environmental rather than from a packaging material.)
What’s more, polyethylene terephthalate or PET, plastic bottled water bottles already use less plastic than any other packaged beverage, the International Bottled Water Association spokeswoman added.
“When a public water system is used as a source for making purified bottled water, several processes are employed to ensure that it meets comprehensive US Food and Drug Administration regulations,” she says.
The American Beverage Association also rejects those studies, highlighting the difference between “correlation” and “causation,” and says people who are overweight and already at risk for heart disease may consume more diet drinks in an attempt to control their weight and the Food and Drug Administration has ruled that artificial sweeteners are safe.