Bottled Water Companies, Environmental Villians

The following post pertains to the article in this link listed below:

http://business-ethics.com/2011/02/26/1739-is-bottled-water-a-waste/

Bottled water has become an ingrained part of U.S. culture. Over 50 billions bottles of water are consumed every year which roughly equates to about 1.5 million barrels of oil to make the bottle for the water to be stored in. That's enough oil to fuel 100,000 cars for approximately one year. These are just a few bothersome statistics presented in the article which exploits one inefficiency of market economics and is, in my opinion, ethically unsound. Bottled water companies need to enforce or adopt a new view on corporate social responsibility. The goal of CSR is to embrace responsibility for the company's actions and encourage a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders, and anyone else in the public sphere.

Water that is cleaner and much cheaper is available through a filtered tap in nearly every single home in America. Oil , electricity, packaging, and transportation resources can all be saved if U.S. citizens would cut back on their consumption of bottled water. Ethically, the bottled water companies know that they are selling their product for a premium, but don't care about the negative environmental influences or the inefficient structure of their entire market. The price of bottled water can be up to 1900 times higher than water from the tap. It would seem the cost of convenience is negligible in this situation considering that bottled water is still relatively cheap to purchase, but the principle of the matter is that logically bottled water makes little sense from an ethical/environmental view. Do you think that the opportunity costs are small enough to overlook the long run environmental costs of bottles that haven't been recycled and oil that could be put to a more efficient use?

Posted By: Grant Luther