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Brace yourselves: I got the calculator out for this post and have been trying to do some maths.
I've been trying to work out the oil used to package the bottled water we drink in Australia. You might have to check my numbers!
The Department of Environment and Climate Change reckons that in 2006 we drank 250 million litres of bottled water, which took 456,131 barrels of oil to package in plastic.
I had no idea how large a barrel of oil is, so I looked it up: Wikipedia says it's approximately 159 litres.
So let's find out how much oil is used per litre of water:
- 456,131 barrels multiplied by 159 litres gives us a total of 72,524,829 litres of oil
- 250,000,000 litres of water divided by 72,524,829 litres of oil gives us 3.44 litres of oil to package 1 litre of water.
Then you've got to transport those bottles to the packaging facility, and then truck them to shops all over Australia - even more oil.
Given that oil is becoming scarcer, shouldn't we be saving it for more important things like medical uses or transport? Why are we using it for disposable containers, throwing it out afterwards to sit in landfill for so long? It's wasteful and I know we can do better.
Comments
Interesting article. Have you seen Cool Change Natural Spring Water (spring water) and Natures Organics (Shampoo), are both packaged in a biopolymer bottle made from plants rather than oil. I hope it's the start of a new packaging revolution that rethinks what sort of packaging we're consuming.
miyo, I haven't seen those yet but have heard of corn-based plastics - are these similar do you think?
They're both using a NatureWorks Ingeo which is a corn based plastic. But my understanding is that they could be made from any plant sugar, so we might be packaging made from Tapioca or sugar cane.
I think your maths is a little back-to front. 3.44 is the number of litres of water per litre of oil. It should be:
72,524,829 litres of oil divided by 250,000,000 litres of water gives us 0.29 litres of oil to package 1 litre of water (plus shipping etc). Not quite as much, but that still averages to around 180ml of oil for a 600ml bottle of water. :)
Argh, I guess it had to happen. As soon as we start putting commas in numbers I start losing track of them! I'm glad I've got readers to check my numbers for me, thankyou :)