Why Do We Drink So Much Bottled Water?

favorite drink. But just one hundred years ago, bottled water was hardly even a business. Water was just something we got from our taps. So how did we get here? How in the world did something we used to get ford seemingly free turn into a billion dollar industry. Like so many modern day products successes, marketing has played a huge role, but so have some other factors. Let's explore. Bottled water was a thriving industry early in United States history.

There are records of it being sold in the u US as early as seventeen sixty seven, but business really started flowing at the beginning of the nineteenth century as dip mold glass technology made bottles more affordable and easier to mass produce. Back then, two types of customers drove bottled water sales, the rich and people who lived in cities.

The wealthy took trips to spas and resorts built around natural springs, so mineral water bottled at the source was away for them to continue enjoying those supposed therapeutic benefits. Just for perspective, by eighteen fifty six, Saratoga Springs in New York was producing seven million bottles of water a year for the average city dweller. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, bottled water was the safest drinking option because

municipal water was often sickening. Literally, drinking bottled water helped people avoid diseases like cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. By ninety most U S. Cities offered free, filtered chlorinated water, which dramatically improved public health. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, of the decreases in depths in major cities was due to clean water. But what was a breakthrough for public health was also a blow to the bottled

water industry. At the beginning of the twentieth century, with free and safe public water, the bottled water industry had adapted to markets it could serve primarily selling five gallon that's about nineteen liter bottles too large operations that needed water for employees. Even with mass produced glass, the bottles were heavy to ship, and that cost weighed down the bottled water business. The nineteen seventies and eighties were the real turning point for the new bottled water industry thanks

to three major influences. First, that's when pet plastic bottles were patented. Unlike heavy glass, pet bottles could stand the pressure of carbonated drinks because they were lighter than glass. Pet bottles helped propel the bottled water industry forward. Second, these two decades are also when French sparkling water company perry A launched its aggressive marketing campaign to get Americans

to spend money on water. In the seventies, perry A hired or sin Well to do voiceover for its TV ads, touting Perier as more quenching, more refreshing, and naturally sparkling from the center of the earth. Perrier also began sponsoring athletic events like the New York City Marathon to associate its water with fitness and health. By night, Perrier was predicting sales of seventy five million bottles that year alone. By the eighties, Perris ads used the tagline Earth's first

soft drink. But the final push to bottled water came in nineteen eighties six, when the Environmental Protection Agency released a report showing tap water used by thirty six million Americans contained high levels of lead. Even though cities rushed to fix these problems after congressional investigations, the distrust of municipal water lingered, making the switch from public water to

bottled water a permanent one for many families. So the health halo that has graced bottled water since ancient times largely explains our spending habits, even when what we're buying is simply filtered tap water, such as pepsicos off affina and Coca Cola's Desani. These ad campaigns around health, purity and youth work so well because they appeal to our

desire for immortality. Researchers at the University of Waterloo conducted a study in that tested this terror management theory, the idea that much of our thinking and behavior is driven by our fear of death, even in things like buying bottled water. The results found that a fear of dying does play a role in why people buy bottled water even though they know it may not be better for

them or good for the planet. Stephanie Cote, one of the researchers on the study, set in a statement, bottled water advertisements play on our greatest fears in two important ways. Our mortality fears make us want to avoid risks, and for many people, bottled water seems safer, somehow purer or controlled. The other psychological, but real aspect that drives people to spend money on bottled water is the continued lack of trust in the government to provide clean, safe drinking water

and maintain water systems. Consider the people of Flint, Michigan, who have relied on bottled water through the contamination crisis that's lasted years there, as have the First Nations people in Canada, where water too reserves has been under drinking advisories since January. Attempts by the Trump administration to repeal

the Federal Clean Water Rule have deepened public distrust. We spoke via email with Dr Peter H. Galek, President Emeritus and Chief Scientists at the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security. He said the use of bottled water in emergency situations is a perfectly good idea, but the challenge is rebuilding public trust after such emergencies so that

private bottled water use can then be eliminated. Bottled water should never be a permanent solution to providing safe, affordable, reliable drinking water for people, also considering the environmental costs of bottled water a mass s which would help the planet.

There is promise in campaigns that give people reusable bottles, laws that banned single use bottles, and the new incarnation of drinking fountains as bottle refillings nations, but the messages to change our habits need to match the power of those that drive sales of bottled water. Gleek explained. The other challenge, of course, is that private bottled water companies have large budgets for advertising their product, while municipal water

agencies do not. This imbalance has produced a situation where it is easy to lose trust in a municipal water system and hard to regain it, even when the vast majority of our water systems are safe and far far cheaper than bottled water, and in places around the world where safe tap water isn't available. The answer is to make it available, not to give up and rely on costly private bottled water. Today's episode was written by Sean

Chavis and produced by Tyler Clang. If you enjoy our show and want to support us directly, check out our online store at t public dot com, slash brain stuff, and of course, for more on this and other environmental topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com