Bottled water companies may seem to have a relatively simple task when it comes to making labels for the ingredients that they contain: there's a certain kind of satisfaction for a consumer these days that comes from looking at a label. Even here, though, there's the chance for misconceptions to be spread.
NPR recently did a story on a report from Antea Group and the International Bottled Water Association regarding the real amount of water used to produce and fill bottles for consumers. Culling information from more than 60 sources, the "Benchmarking Study" revealed that, in addition to the water that goes into bottled water and sodas for drinking, there's an additional amount of what it calls "process water" used in its production.
So what does that mean? Chances are the average consumer doesn't know that, in some cases, more water is used in creating the bottle for the water than filling it. But the report indicated that it's not just the makers of these beverages that might need to keep an eye on the amount of water that they use.
"In comparison, other beverage sectors such as carbonated soft drink bottling and beer production average have larger water use ratios driven by higher intensity processes unique to these other beverages, such as flavor mixing, blending, carbonation, fermentation, etc.," the executive summary of the report noted.
If bottled water companies are interested in putting a new label into use that displays factors like these that aren't industry standards or as widely reported on as others, perhaps an in-house labelmaker could be of some help and make this process a little easier.
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