Guilt by the bottleful: bottled water is being portrayed as an environmental villain. But is it any different from bottled soda or juice?

• Author: Williams, Alex
• Position: NATIONAL

Those bottles of water always seemed so harmless tucked into everyone s backpacks. In fact, when some schools banned soda and other sugary drinks from cafeterias and vending machines, they sold bottled water as a healthy alternative. But now, environmentalists are saying that water that comes in plastic bottles is not so healthy for the planet.

The debate centers not on the water, but on oil--the oil that's used to make the bottles, and the oil that's used to get them to consumers. According to the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., it takes 1.5 million barrels of oil a year to make the plastic water bottles Americans use--plus countless barrels to transport the water from as far away as Fiji and refrigerate it. Plastic bottles that are not being recycled are piling up in landfills. (Of course, plenty of those bottles once contained drinks other than water.)

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Julia Duch, 17, a senior at Staten Island Academy in New York, says that after reading a magazine article on the environmental impact of bottled water, she decided that "there was no use for carrying around a bottle of Poland Spring."

As head of her school's Environmental Club, Julia thought she should set an example: She now carries water in a reusable plastic bottle. The club plans to submit a proposal that the school stop selling bottled water and give each student a reusable water bottle.

The issue took on a higher profile this past summer when the mayors of San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, and New York began urging people to opt for tap water instead of bottled. This added momentum to efforts by environmental groups like Corporate Accountability International and Food & Water Watch.

Over the last 15 years, the bottled water industry has turned a product that once seemed an indulgence into a daily necessity. Bottled water has now overtaken coffee and milk in sales nationally.

TURNING TO THE TAP

An August editorial in The New York Times--"In Praise of Tap Water"--argued against bottled water on the ground that "this country has some of the best public water supplies in the world." Many restaurants have pulled bottled water from their menus.

The industry is feeling the heat, and is taking steps to address these concerns. Nestle, which sells Perrier and Poland Spring, and Coca-Cola, which sells Dasani, have reduced package weight, tried to become more energy efficient, and launched conservation and recycling projects.

According to The Wall Street...