Why We Can’t Stop Buying Water (But Need to Buy It Smarter)
Part IV: The Problems We’re Not Solving by Banning Bottled Water
An Ecofiscal blog series by Jessie Sitnick & Dale Beugin
The Problems We’re Not Solving by Banning Bottled Water, seeks to unravel the web of issues that underlie “Ban the Bottle” movements and policies. In Part 2 we looked at the problem of plastic waste and determined that while bottled water might contribute to that problem, a policy exclusively banning bottled water is unlikely to do much good in solving it.
In Part 3 we acknowledge the water security concerns raised by a changing climate, and argue that pricing water fairly is a necessity. Bottled water policies that perpetuate the idea of “free” water may do more harm than good.
In this final segment, we follow bottled water — and so many of the other things we buy — up stream, and propose an ecofiscal approach to one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century: the degradation of our freshwater ecosystems.
How Much Water Are You Wearing Right Now?
When you buy a litre of water, you know you’re buying a litre of water. (Yes, we’ve just blown your mind with that sentence).
But consider this: when you buy a t-shirt, you may be under the impression that you are not buying water at all. The fact is you are — in essence — buying as much as 2,700 litres of water. That’s what it takes to grow the cotton used in your average short-sleeved v-neck.
What we’re talking about here is “embedded” water (sometimes called “virtual” water), which actually makes up the majority of our personal and industrial “water footprints” (i.e. the amount of water we consume and pollute in the course of our daily lives or operations). Beef, coffee, wine, oil, leather, cheese, sugar, chocolate, blue jeans — all chocked full of embedded water (here’s a neat tool by National Geographic that helps you dig into and compare the virtual water in the products most of us consume every day).
Embedded water is worth bringing into the bottled water debate, not to excuse beverage companies from a discussion of environmental impacts. Rather to point out that only targeting beverage companies — worse, only targeting bottled water — is really missing a huge piece of the puzzle. If we’re serious about addressing the water footprints of our college campuses, businesses, or cities, we need to start thinking differently. If you’re banning bottled water for ecological reasons, but happily selling bottles of soda, iced-tea, sports drinks and…maybe cotton t-shirts, well let’s just say there is a boat, and you’re probably not on it.
It’s unlikely that college campuses are going to give up selling pop or t-shirts any time soon. So, let’s consider how an ecofiscal policy approach could be used to address the environmental, social, and economic costs of water use in the upstream production of so many our consumer goods (including, but not limited to, bottled water).
Let’s First Agree that Water is Not Limitless, Even in Canada
Inherent to an ecofiscal conversation about addressing the impacts of water use, is an implicit acknowledgement that water use has environmental (and other) costs.
This may seem obvious. But in Canada — where we have more lakes than any other country in the world and almost 20% of the world’s fresh water — it’s anything but. The myth of Canada’s bottomless water wealth is deeply engrained. And it’s also wrong.
Canada has about 7% of the globes’ renewable water supply; that’s the stuff that counts because we can actually access it and use it. The rest is locked up in glaciers, deep underground aquifers, or as “fossil water” in lakes. And while that’s still a fair amount of water, about half of it drains to the North — away from 85% of Canada’s population. And getting water from the North to market in the South is not cost free. Ask people in California.
Here’s the big point: just because Canada has a large total volume of water, that does not mean that water is equally distributed or accessible to everyone. It’s not. So while it may be true that Canada is — at least for now — a relatively water secure country, the water we have to work with (play with, grow food with, imbibe) is limited and, in many places, stressed by overuse.
There’s No Substitute for Water
Of course, elsewhere in the world, water stress is reaching extreme levels. Large rivers from the Colorado to the Rio to the Ganges to the Nile are so overtapped that they no longer reach the sea, sometimes for months at a time. Meanwhile, the over-pumping of groundwater — much of which supports world food production — is causing water tables to drop across China, India, Pakistan, Mexico, and the Western U.S.
As Sandra Postel writes, unlike fossil fuels, there is no substitute for water and no alternative to water. The impacts of depleting and diverting our global water supplies are many and great: soil degradation, water quality deterioration, decline in freshwater species, less and more expensive access to drinking water.
And of course, with the degradation of our freshwater resources, we also lose the economic benefits they afford us. Major sectors of the economy (fishing, farming, tourism, manufacturing) rely, directly and indirectly, on reliable access to healthy fresh water. A recent paper by UK’s Office for National Statistics estimated that the value of the UK’s freshwaters is approximately £39.5 billion.
Calculating the economic value of something like water is incredibly challenging, and estimates like the UK’s are experimental best guesses. Equally tough is translating that value into price — one that accounts for economic cost of using an additional litre, or thousands of litres, of water. But that is exactly what an ecofiscal policy approach would seek to do.
How Much Should You Pay for a Bottle of Water?
As we’ve written in the past, there are a couple different ways to think about water pricing. One is to internalize the cost of water delivery — building and maintaining that infrastructure isn’t cheap. These “user fees” would help recoup the costs of providing water to meet increasing water demand, while at the same time encouraging more efficient use at home and at work.
But then there is another way to think about water pricing, more in line with what we’re talking about here — and that’s to consider the value of water as a resource. Whether it is used for agriculture, for drinking, for t-shirt manufacturing, or to underpin natural ecosystems, using a litre of water for one thing often means that it can’t be used for something else. This is a challenge that prairie provinces know all too well, as they seek to manage their water resources in the face of increasing pressure from agriculture, resource development, growing populations, and climate change.
Another key question to ask is — where is the water coming from? All bottles of water are not created equally. As blogger and chemist Blair King explains in a recent article, geography has a lot to do with the impact of water withdrawals on an ecosystem. And that’s only one variable. The opportunity costs of pulling water from one place will be different than pulling it from another.
So with all of this in mind, let’s imagine an ecofiscal policy that applies to all major industrial water users in Canada. These users would pay some fee for every litre they pull from the earth. And that fee would be based on the real environmental, social, and economic costs of removing that water from its ecosystem. What would happen?
One thing is almost certain: that bottle of water is going to get more expensive (and so will that bottle of pop, that cotton t-shirt, chocolate bar, and cheese hamburger, etc.). Consumers like us will be asked to pay more for products with higher levels of embedded water. And if we can avoid paying that fee, for example — you know — by bringing our reusable bottle to class and filling it up from the tap, well, most of us probably will.
Something else might happen too: industry will seek out innovative ways to use less water and to choose the water they use more carefully to help their bottom lines. It is hard to imagine selling a waterless bottle of bottled water. But imagine a plastic water bottle with less embedded water in it (i.e. less water used to produce it).
And if you can’t imagine such a thing is possible, you clearly haven’t come across the edible water bottle yet — coming soon to a store near you.
Water Risk is the new Carbon Risk?
But really, none of this is as far-fetched as it might sound. Provinces including Quebec, Nova Scotia, and now BC are advancing water-pricing policies specifically to account for environmental costs of water use.
Meanwhile, globally, the corporate sector is having a serious conversation about water risk and how to better prepare for the dryer world ahead. Last year WRI, in partnership with Bloomberg business services, launched an interactive water risk tool to help industries calculate how much water they might have access to in a given location, the quality of that water, the regulations they may have to follow, and any reputational risks associated with water withdrawals from that site.
Internal water valuation efforts and even shadow water pricing is starting to emerge as corporations take a longer-view of the role water plays in their business models. Corporate efforts to shrink water footprints are often aligned with similar internal efforts to shrink carbon emissions. Greater water efficiency and conservation efforts are no longer about being a “good corporate citizen.” They are about staying in business. One could argue that there has never been a more ripe moment for innovative water policy that scales up and institutionalizes this growing corporate awareness.
It’s Complicated
Pricing water on the scale we’re talking about here is not easy or straightforward. The nice thing about hypotheticals, like the idea we posed above, is you get to gloss over the really sticky questions like how to set the “right” price for water? How would policy handle differences between watersheds? Would it apply to Canadian corporations drawing water from outside the country? After all, supply-chains are global but water withdrawal impacts are, as we’ve noted, definitively local. Would a Canadian water pricing policy aim to conserve our own water resources, shrink our Canadian water footprint globally, or both?
The complexity of the problem is exactly the point. It’s not something that can be solved with a blunt instrument. And that’s exactly why bottled water bans aren’t the solution. But boy, are they ever enlightening.
For those of us (at least one of these authors included) who feels the prick of shame with every bottled water purchase, it’s valuable to step back and examine our own assumptions. What about this bothers me? What needs to change?
Governments are no different. Policy starts not with a solution, but with a problem. This series examines three — plastic waste, water insecurity, and the degradation of our fresh water. Could an ecofiscal approach help address these problems? We think so. It’s certainly worth a deeper (sorry, last pun) look.
Markets are powerful tools for driving decisions about what gets produced and how, what we consume and how. Can ecofiscal policies solve these challenges alone? Likely not. But we may be surprised at just how far they could take us.
***
Jessie Sitnick (Communications Director) and Dale Beugin (Research Director) are both staff of Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission. If you enjoyed our little series, check out what else we’re working on at www.ecofiscal.ca
