Unfortunately, while here I am forced to drink bottled water because otherwise I will get sick(lesson which was confirmed to me when I drank a glass of coke with ice cubes said to be made from bottled water when in fact it was not).
I have read that we can estimate that the oil required to produce is 33% of the bottle’s contents. Sadly the amounts of water needed to produce a bottle of water are quite high as well as a bottle of water requires twice the amount it will hold to be produced.
It is also estimated that the plastic used to make these bottles requires 17 million barrels of oil worldwide.
The inefficiency of water bottles reminds me a lot of Manning’s article when he is talking about how much energy is required to produce cereal in comparison to how much nutrients we actually receive from the finished product.
more info here :http://www.pacinst.org/topics/water_and_sustainability/bottled_water/bottled_water_and_energy.html