Just a little something I'm trying to wrap my brain around at 11:30 on a Sunday night: Why isn't there more canned drinking water out there?
I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but it seems to me there is a great deal of debate and discussion surrounding ways to minimize the carbon footprint created by transporting water from its source to the eventual bottlers and distributors, while relatively little is said about the packaging itself (at least in terms of the material used).
It is widely known that plastic literally takes hundreds of years to degrade in a landfill, and 97% of all plastic products end up in one. Moreover, in the spirit of Unruh's "Biosphere Rules", most recycled plastic is "downcycled" into less valuable products before its ultimate demise.
In contrast, aluminum cans are cheap, lightweight and easy to recycle. And the old metal from recycled cans is usually made into new aluminum cans. I read that old containers can be recycled and put back onto store shelves within 60 days, and making cans from recycled aluminum consumes only 4% of the energy used in manufacturing cans from scratch. Pretty impressive. Add to this the fact that aluminum cans don't use the petroleum input that plastic bottles do and it seems to me we've got ourselves a better mousetrap here.
So why don't companies use cans more often for packaging filtered drinking water? Deja Blue offers canned water, but I can't find any other brands that have followed suit. Can it all be attributed to the mental hurdle of drinking a "still" beverage out of a metal can? We do it with juice all the time on airplanes. Why not water?
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Hi Matt, I think you bring up a very interesting dillema faced by most consumer packaged goods companies. While cans present a fantastic, environmentally friendly alternative to plastic bottles, I can almost guarantee you that the brand managers responsible for packaging decisions have reams of consumer research showing that metal cans simply won't sell as well as well as plastic bottles. At the end of the day, CPG companies are interested in making a profit, and the landscape is too cluttered with bottled water options competing on little else other than attractive packaging. Consumer perception can also deter metal can usage based on the belief that the water will taste "metallic", even if that is not true. I believe that based on recent scientific evidence that chemicals from plastic bottles are leaching out into the water and are potential carcinogens, we will now see companies move to alternative packaging options. One option that I ran into while working at Nestle is the TetraPak...This is made of paper and is fully recyclable. More and more companies are using them for drinks outside of traditional juice packs to include energy drinks and protein shakes. I think that it's up to us as future executives at companies that produce consumer goods to implement some of our greener standards into the products that are manufactured and to educate consumers about the sustainability of the products that they buy.
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