The energy and petroleum used to make and deliver the millions of disposable plastic water bottles B.C. residents drink and toss each year is equivalent to 64,000 barrels of oil – enough to drive a fleet of more than 12,000 SUVs across Canada from coast to coast.

That estimate is one of the findings in a new report that paints a damning portrait of the waste flowing from the manufacture, transportation and disposal of plastic water bottles.

"Plastic beverage bottles are creating an enormous environmental footprint in British Columbia," says the report by Toxic Free Canada.

It provides fresh ammunition for plastic bottle critics who want local cities to spur more of their citizens to switch to tap water instead.

The report estimates 126 million to 164 million standard PET (polyetylene terephthalate) water bottles were sold in B.C. in 2007.

It goes on to calculate the petroleum that goes into the actual plastic and the energy to make the bottles and then fill, label and seal them.

Transport costs are also estimated, based on the distance to truck bottles to Vancouver. Those vary by manufacturer – Aquafina and Dasani are bottled less than 30 kilometres away in Delta and Coquitlam, respectively, and Nestlé bottled water comes from Hope. In contrast, bottled water from France and Fiji travels thousands of kilometres by sea.

Researchers used market share estimates to tabulate how many of each firm's bottles come here and the resulting fuel burned shipping them.

Their results:

• Between 44,000 and 58,000 barrels of oil were used manufacturing the bottles sold in B.C.

• Energy equivalent to 200 to 300 barrels of oil was used to treat the water and fill, label and seal the bottles.

• Another 4,850 to 6,300 barrels of oil were burned transporting the bottles to Vancouver.

As many as 64,000 barrels of oil are therefore consumed each year feeding B.C.'s bottled water addiction, the report says, enough to fuel more than 12,000 Ford Explorers from Vancouver to Newfoundland.

That's enough oil to fill four Olympic swimming pools.

Put another way, the greenhouse gases generated providing bottled water to B.C. is equivalent to the emissions generated from heating 2,200 typical Canadian homes.

While 73 per cent of plastic water bottles used in B.C. in 2007 were recycled, they were made into other products like clothing and carpet, rather than turned back into more bottles.

Critics call that "downcycling," because unlike the near infinitely recyclable aluminum cans, more plastic must be sourced from petroleum all the time to make new bottles.

Despite B.C. having the best bottle recycling rate on the continent, the report says more bottles are ending up landfilled every year because of growing sales.

It estimates 35 to 45 million plastic water bottles weren't recycled in 2007 – enough to fill almost 22,000 pickup trucks – and two-thirds of them are believed to have ended up in Metro Vancouver landfills.

Too many bottles are also ending up as litter and making their way into oceans, the report argues, adding water bottlers falsely claim their products are environmentally responsible.

Pressure is on local cities to stamp out bottled water use. Evan Seal / Surrey Leader

"Bottled water is anything but a solution to two of the key environmental issues confronting British Columbians – global warming and growing waste," the report says, adding water bottlers have successfully branded their products as safe, convenient and better-tasting than chlorine-treated tap water.

The report also challenges the safety claims, citing other studies that the metal antimony leaches from the plastic into the water when bottles stand for extended periods and that other synthetic compounds have been detected in low levels.

Surrey Coun. Barbara Steele, who sits on Metro Vancouver's water committee, says the report makes a compelling case for change.

"I find it persuasive," she said.

But her city and others across the region are also finding it hard to break from the bottle.

Metro Vancouver has set a target of reducing bottled water consumption here by 20 per cent by 2010.

The Metro board last year called on its 21-member cities to pass a municipal tap water declaration and phase out the use of bottled water in civic facilities.

So far Burnaby, Delta, White Rock, Pitt Meadows, Port Moody, Anmore and Belcarra have pledged to eliminate the bottled water sold in their buildings.

The City of Vancouver drafted its own declaration.

Surrey and Richmond have passed watered down resolutions supporting increased tap water use but declining to actually stop selling bottled water in their city halls and rec centres.

"We have to do something, there's no question about it," Steele said.

But she said change will not come fast.

"Bottled water is a hard habit to break," she said, adding the city cannot phase it out fast without finding alternatives.

"To say we're not going to have it at all available – people just aren't willing to do that."

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts has also questioned the logic of stamping out bottled water if plastic bottles of pop are still sold at the same sites.

Steele noted it will take time to install more drinking fountains, taps that can dispense water in civic buildings and possibly offer options like roving water-dispensing carts at public events.

Coquitlam city council has yet to pass a declaration of any sort – even though it, too, has a representative on the Metro water committee.

Coquitlam Coun. Mae Reid, the committee's vice-chair, said her council has been too busy with more pressing issues to debate the issue.

The lack of action angers Vanessa Pollock, a Kwantlen Polytechnic University student in Richmond who is part of a group of environmental protection students campaigning for a switch to tap water.

"What's convenient right now isn't going to be convenient for the next generations," she said.

Pollock says it's almost "criminal" for Metro Vancouver cities to keep selling bottled water – with the waste and energy consumption it entails – when the best water in the world can flow straight out of local taps.

Her fight against plastic bottles stems from a trip she took with a classmate to the Galapagos Islands, hoping to capture a once-in-a-lifetime look at its rare ecology.

"To see these beautiful sea lions playing with all this plastic waste that's washing up on the shores and a sea lion choking on the cap of a water bottle," Pollock recalls. "That was enough for me right there."

She says plastic bottles from Metro Vancouver likely end up in the floating continent of garbage in the Pacific Ocean, known as the North Pacific Gyre.

In the ocean, plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, to be eventually consumed by fish and introducing toxins into the food chain.

"We really don't know what the long-term effects are going to be on the fish and how it's going to make its way up the food chain," she said. "Eventually, it's going to end up with humans.

"We don't know in a few years what the impact of our convenience of having bottled water is going to be."

Surrey city council discusses bottled water

Bottlers refute critical report

A leading bottled water manufacturer is rejecting the findings in a report that show a heavy carbon footprint to provide the bottled water sold in B.C.

Nestle Waters Canada spokesman John Challinor II said the Toxic Free Canada report's estimate of bottled water sold in B.C. is inaccurate, although he wouldn't say what sales figure would be correct.

"The report has absolutely no credibility," he said. "It's not legitimate science. It's not peer reviewed."

Challinor said the bottled beverage industry makes up just 10 to 15 per cent of the PET plastic used to package food in Canada.

"We're a very small part of the total PET business," he said. "We're not the villain here by any stretch."

Anyone who thinks stamping out plastic bottles will reduce landfill waste is wrong, he added.

"Plastic beverage containers represent one-fifth of one per cent of the waste stream," Challinor said. "If our industry disappeared tomorrow, there would be no significant reduction in the waste or refuse going to landfill."

Commercial and industrial waste are much more promising areas to eliminate garbage heading to landfills, he said.

Consumers wanting to do their part would be better off looking at where their fruits and vegetables come from, Challinor said, and eliminating produce that's shipped from great distances in favour of what's locally grown.

"They'd dramatically reduce their carbon footprint," he said.

Challinor said most bottled water in B.C. isn't trucked very far – the biggest producers source their water either in Metro Vancouver or Hope.

He said the plastic bottle represents 55 per cent of Nestle's carbon footprint.

Many people don't choose tap or bottled water, but use both, he added.

"They drink tap water at home and they drink bottled water on the go," he said. "We don't see ourselves competing with tap water."

Improved tap water treatment coming

Expect the battle of the bottle to get louder later this year.

Metro Vancouver intends to crank up its campaign promoting tap water in the fall and winter after its new Seymour Capilano Water Filtration plant goes into service.

The plant, which is costing the region more than $800 million, will initially filter water from the Seymour watershed, with Capilano water added once a connecting tunnel that has faced long delays and cost overruns is complete.

The filter system should eliminate rare periods of murky, turbid tap water, such as the one that triggered a first-ever boil water advisory in 2006 after a winter storm stirred up silt in the reservoirs.

The improved water treatment, using ultraviolet disinfection, may convince more people to use tap water, Metro officials hope.

"It will also create the opportunity to position Metro Vancouver tap water as a precious resource that should be managed," according to a staff report.

It noted many recent immigrants assume tap water is inferior based on what they know from their home countries.

BY THE NUMBERS

Other findings in the Toxic Free Canada report titled The Toxic Footprint of PET-Bottled Water in British Columbia:

• Plastic bottled drink consumption in B.C. climbed 67 per cent from 2003 to 2007, in large part due to the rising popularity of bottled water.

• 73 per cent of plastic PET (polyetylene terephthalate) bottles were recycled in 2007 in B.C.

• 130 million plastic bottles ended up as landfill or environmental waste in B.C. – up 250 per cent from 2002.

• Water bottles are estimated to make up 35 to 45 million of the unrecycled bottles, of which 23 to 30 million went into Metro Vancouver landfills.

• 478 million plastic bottles were sold in B.C. in 2007, nearly twice as many as five years earlier.

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