The New and Improved – Boxed Water

This past Thursday, I attended a conference and in the swag-bags that they give out, I found a box of water. The label said “Boxed Water is Better”. With minimalist packaging, I immediately googled what it’s all about. Bottled water has long been the poster-boy for greedy capitalism and environmental destruction. Any high school student could probably tell you that plastic packaging is the culprit. As you get deeper into the issue of bottled water, you’ll find the complexity of packaging,  shipping, distribution, and water equity come into play. Here are some fast facts on bottled water before diving into the new boxed water phenomena.

• Planet
  • Takes 3L of water to produce 1L of bottled water
  • One bottle of water equates to filling a quarter of that bottle with oil
  • Plastic bottles take up to 1000 years to biodegrade while leaking toxic chemicals into the groundwater
  • Incinerated bottes release toxic chemicals into the air
  • Ocean plastics remain the top killer for marine life

• Profit
  • For consumers bottled water can cost more than a litre of gasoline
  • For manufacturers, some can take advantage of dated water laws paying only $40 for 319 million litres of water
  • Driver of Sales
    • People think it’s safer and healthier than tap water
    • Advertisements shows pristine glaciers and mountain streams which leaves consumers with that impression
• People
  • Water Safety
    • In Canada, local water suppliers are inspected every day while bottled water plants are inspected once every three years
  • Water Crisis
    • Nearly 1 billion people in the developing world doesn’t have access to clean safe drinking water

Boxed Water Is Better wants to change the way water is sold, shipped and consumed by providing consumers a better option when purchasing water, while still enjoying the convenience. It boasts that 76% of the product is made with paper, using sources from certified, sustainably managed forests. The selling point for the company is the shipping. 35000 empty cartons are flat-packed to the plant before the filing happens. In contrast to traditional companies that are filling with rounded plastics, this is a great step towards reducing impact.

It didn’t take too long before I found a competitor called JUST Water. Their website is more transparent about the stats and the facts, covering all the aspects of potential impact including detailed explanations of how their product is made. On the point of shipping, 1.5 million bottles fit into a standard 40ft truck versus the same amount would take 2.5 trucks for traditional “pre-formed” bottles. If bottles are pre-formed, it will take 13 trucks. It’s interesting to see that even though packaging has been long debated issue, it’s only in these couple of years where we can see successful entrants breaking into the beverage market with more sustainable packaging.

The good news is that these new entrants now add competitive pressure to traditional companies like Coke and Nestle. You’ll usually see these companies in the lean green quadrant or defensive green. In 2015, a couple of these giants teamed up to create the PET bottles made with plant-based materials like sugarcane and corn.

While these companies are shifting towards renewable resources and away from fossil fuels, I’m curious about the ripple effects for each particular raw material. Corn is already being heavily used for animal feedstock. One of the criticisms against biofuels was the depletion of such resource could jeopardize worldwide food security. The recyclability of paper is widespread in North America which arguably closes the loop better than developing countries where recycling facilities aren’t as widespread. As discussed in class, many people in developing countries turn to bottled water or beverages because of unsafe drinking water conditions. What are other raw materials that these companies may have overlooked? Will it become a problem in 10, 20 years?