Bottled Water: Causing Global Warming?

[Guest guest]

February 18, 2006

Bottled Water: Causing Global Warming?

 

The Times has been running some numbers through the calculator:

 

Hey wait! It's CO2 that makes bread dough rise! Quick! Ban bakeries!

 

Despite its pure image, bottled water is making a significant

contribution to climate change. The industry produces as much

greenhouse gas as the electricity consumption of about 20,000 homes

in a year, according to research by The Times.

 

 

 

 

To supply the more than two billion litres of bottled water that is

consumed by Britons every year, a quarter of which comes from

abroad, bottled-water companies produce 33,200 tonnes of CO2

emissions, just less than the electricity consumption of 20,000

households, and the equivalent of the energy needs of 6,000

households.

 

Horrors! That much? Wow, I mean....population 60 million odd,

average household size 2.36, that's about 25 million households in

the country. So bottled water is causing 0.024 % of the CO2

emissions. Ah, no wait, transport and industry are the majority of

emissions, not households. Say a third each, just to make the

numbers easier?

 

So bottled water causes 0.008%,....that's less than one hundredth of

one percent..., of the CO2 emissions in this country.

 

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the emissions caused by

the electrons The Times has massacred to bring us this news were

more than the industry itself wastes.

 

Still this does lead to an interesting series of possible campaigns.

 

Keg beer is infused with (deliberately manufactured!) CO2 to make

it fizzy so we'll have to ban that.

 

Soda pop too, obviously.

 

Real ale might be allowed to survive as the CO2 is

made " naturally " , as a by product of the fermentation, would be

created anyway as the grain decomposed.

 

Guinness might be allowed as they use " nitrous " (a mixture of CO2

and NOx).

 

Hey wait! It's CO2 that makes bread dough rise! Quick! Ban bakeries!

 

Update. Running the numbers through the calculator, just the CO2 in

keg beer is 28,000 tonnes a year. Have to ban it of course.

 

http://timworstall.typepad.com/timworstall/2006/02/bottled_water_c.ht

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