Hello.  My name is The Bottled Water.

I was born in a bottling plant thanks to PET, my daddy and to WATER, my mummy. My dad gave me the skin and my mom the blood to live; she came from a fantastic place, which is called natural source…wow! Can you imagine?? It must be such a location!! I would like to go there and visit sometime; she told me that there are trees, silence and peace. I don’t know what she is talking about, but it sounds kind of wonderful.

My daddy, on the other side, was born in a plastic factory where there are no trees, no silence and no peace… mmm…doesn’t sound so good, don’t you think? He told me that his name is the acronym of Polyethylene terephthalate: such a weird name!! I heard people saying that plastics of this type use around 6.45kg of oil per kg, 294.2kg of water per kg, and result in 3.723kg of greenhouse gas emissions per kg. I don’t really understand what this means, but it doesn’t sound good. I also heard that I hold 1 liter of mom and I require 5 liters of her in my manufacturing process (this includes power plant cooling water). Well,  anyway, I am made of this and I respect my dad,  so I have to deal with it.

Now I live in a fridge in a place called “superstar”…oh no,  it wasn’t that…mmm,  let me think…oh yes,  now I remember: “supermarket”! That’s it! It’s quite cold inside and I share a little space with my brothers and sisters and other friends; it is a multicultural environment, with people coming from all over the world, it’s amazing!! Every day we tell each other stories about our trip to get here. Personally, I’ve made a long trip: I left China to get to Fiji… Oh! what a nice place! Just yesterday two women came in the supermarket, they took me, shook me and one was saying to the other: “I’ve read a lot about the total ecological impact of an imported bottle. For example, this bottle comes from Fiji, but it is actually made in China, you see? So a container vessel uses 9g of fuel per tkm (that’s metric tons carried x distance traveled), 80g of water per tkm, and releases 17g of GHGs per tkm. The distance from China to Fiji is 8,000km, which gives us exactly 0.25tkm ( (0.025kg / 1t/1000kg) x 8,000km = 1.0tkm). So, 2.3g of fossil fuels, 20g of water, and 4.3g of GHGs per bottle delivered to Fiji from China. Isn’t it awful?!?!” and the other answered: “Yes, it is. That’s why I won’t buy this bottle because financing the devastation of the environment is really not trendy. Darling, since everyone is so eco-green these days, don’t you think there has to be another way to drink quality purified water without wasting the plastic?” The other one shrugged pensively and they left me there and continued talking about my mom’s problems related to the environment.

(Data Source: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/pablo_calculate.php)