Should Bottled Water Be Banned?

January 21st, 2009 | economics -

I often hear of arguments saying bottles mineral water should be banned. The reasons are:

Contributes to global warming
Creates unnecessary landfill

For what it is worth I’d like to give my twopennce worth on this topic. But, first, I have to admit my bias and prejudices. The thing is I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t drink soft drinks – I really hate Coke and things like that. I’m vegetarian. I cycle to work. I vote Green (if I ever get round to voting). I get up at 6am in the morning to meditate. But, I do have one weakness – I really like drinking bottled water.

Sometimes, I like to sip the nicely carbonated San Pelegrino, other times I like to drink the pure still Evian. Sometimes I drink filtered tap water. But, water is the only thing I like to drink. I know it’s a bad habit – But, I’ve tried to kick it without success.

And I’m sure people are right when they say Thames tap water is much better for your health that Evian. (I mean all those nitrates, and chlorine is good for you right ?) And the fact tap water gets recycled seven times means it must be very eco.

Tax Bottled Water.

Now as an economist I’m very fond of Pigouvian taxes. I believe we should have higher taxes on petrol, Fatty foods e.t.c

If people think bottled water has negative externalities (pollution, unnecessary landfill) then I’d be happy for an appropriate tax to be places on bottled water so bad people like me can pay the true social cost.

But, if we tax bottled water shouldn’t we tax soft drinks? And is not water good for you? Maybe we should subsidise bottled water and tax soft drinks to encourage people to drink sugar free liquid?

The other issue as Freakonomics point out is that if we ban bottled water, people will just switch to other bottled drinks, which are less healthy.

The other argument is that people could drink tap water rather than bottled water but, you can’t get coke out of a tap. But, you could cycle to work so lets ban cars – that would do much more to reduce pollution.