FROM THE TAP TO THE BOTTLE:THE EMERGENCE OF MUNICIPAL BOTTLED WATER

摘要

Over the past decade, the bottled water market has expanded at an extraordinary pace, increasingrnby 11 percent over the year 2002 alone. Today, the bottled water business is an $8 billion perrnyear industry in America ($35 billion worldwide), and in 2004 bottled water is expected tornsurpass both coffee and milk in per capita consumption, trailing only soft drinks. The reasons forrnthis surge in popularity run the gamut from taste to convenience to safety, but the one commonrnfactor is that, however unfairly, the rationale for drinking bottled water increasingly representsrnan indictment of tap water in the minds of many consumers. Recently, however, a number ofrnutilities have sought to reverse this trend by bottling municipally treated water, thus capitalizingrnon the popularity of bottled water to help dispel common misconceptions about tap water.rnWhen the Birmingham Water Works Board (BWWB) began to consider the option of bottling itsrnown water, the Board retained Malcolm Pirnie to help assess the viability and determine thernappropriate justification, if any, for a BWWB municipal bottled water operation. Consequently,rna survey was developed to gather information from approximately 20 other utilities that hadrneither previously studied bottling municipal water or which were currently engaged in such arnbottling operation. The survey was designed to be as comprehensive as possible and includedrnsuch issues as (among others): the utility’s primary motive for bottling water; cost (capital andrnoperating); product distribution and sales (if applicable); treatment; product labeling; in-housernvs. outsourced bottling; project delivery method (I.e., design-bid-build, design-build, design-build-rnoperate, etc.); and state and federal regulations.rnOne of the most unexpected finds of the survey was that a number of the utilities contacted werernnot only very interested in the results of the survey themselves, but had also contacted some ofrnthe other surveyed utilities independently to gather information about municipal bottled water inrna similar manner, albeit via a less comprehensive process. Interest was particularly high amongrnthose utilities that were still in the study phase and considering the advantages and disadvantagesrnof bottling municipal water. Thus, the intent of this paper is to present the results of this surveyrnand the insights it revealed to serve as a resource for other utilities that might be weighing thernpros and cons of municipal bottled water operations.