EU bottled water boom poses environmental questions

Europeans are drinking more and more bottled water amid preoccupation with weight loss and cravings for emotional experiences like "naturalness," industry surveys show, but the water boom has an environmental cost and water marketing is not always what it seems. European consumers drank 50.3 billion litres of bottled water in 2006 according to figures from industry analysts Canadean and Zenith International, with average market growth of 3.3 percent a year since 2000. To put things into perspective, the volume is more than two times the water in Lake Buttermere in the UK's Lake District.

But individual markets are racing ahead of the average rate with nine to 12 percent growth in the UK and Spain last year and with annual growth of over 7 percent forecast for the next five years in new EU members such as Poland and the Baltic states. In 2006, bottled water consumption fell in one EU state - France - only, by a marginal amount.

The UN's millennium development goal for halving the 1 billion people worldwide with no access to safe drinking water calls for €23 billion a year spending on global water management projects. Based on conservative estimates, EU consumers spend well over €25 billion a year on their bottled water appetite today.