Packaged Water

This presentation made at the Seminar on Packaged Water Industry in India, organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on 30th June 2009, gives details of the BIS regulations applicable to Packaged Drinking Water.

This presentation made at the Seminar on Packaged Water Industry in India, organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on 30th June 2009, gives a brief background of the various linds of plastics used, the varous categories and sources of plastic waste and the various recyling technologies available.

This presentation made at the Seminar on Packaged Water Industry in India, organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on 30th June 2009, gives a basic picture of the Packaged Drinking Water market in India - overall market size, size of various segments, factors driving industry growth and industry trends, as well as case study of some packaged water brands

Underwriters Laboratories is one of the world's leading, independent, product safefy and testing organisation. 

This study by Carewater focuses on the large number of ‘cottage’ type  Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants that came to be marketed for supplying good and safe water to the consumers under ‘packed drinking water’ category, and a big market for which emerged in North Gujarat. For the purposes of this study, ‘fluoride-free water’ means treated water containing prescribed quantity of fluoride and not completely ‘fluoride-free’.  

The conference was held in Bangalore on 30th June 2009 at the ITC Windsor. With cities expanding, the need for drinking water is exponentially increasing. The municipal systems are stressed to breaking limits and more and more people are turning to bottled water. And this is the case not only in urban but in rural areas as well. Today, the bottled water industry is at 1000 crores and is visualised to expand more! In this context the Confederation of Indian Industries organised a seminar on the Packaged Water Industry on 30th June, 2009 to discuss the scope of the market, the standards of quality and the methods of disposing the waste produced due to the industry. The source for most of the drinking water in our country remains ground water. This contributes to 80% of drinking water in rural areas and 50% in urban areas. However, claimed Mr. T.M. Hunse, Regional Director of the Central Ground Water Board, the excessive usage of Groundwater is the direct cause of dry wells and the depleting levels of groundwater in the country. However, the need for bottled water cannot be denied. Despite conflicts between communities and bottled water plants, many of the country’s poor are at the mercy of the municipal supplies which are erratic and unreliable, he said. Bottled water provides an alternative way to access clean and healthy water. At the same time, it absolves the government of its duty and ends up leaving farmers high and dry. He placed full responsibility on the bottled water plants to ensure people safe water (especially when the groundwater is polluted) and work towards conscientiously using the existing groundwater supply in an egalitarian manner.

Last Wednesday, this rural Australian town 100 miles south of Sydney, made history with its near-unanimous consensus to ban the sale of bottled water. At the town meeting of 350 voters, only 2 voted against the ban. This indicates an increasing awareness of the futility of the bottled water and its drain on natural resources. The landmark decision comes right after the State-wide ban in New South Wales, where State departments and agencies have been restrained from buying bottled water, calling it “a waste of money and natural resources”.

An average trekker leaves behind approximately 100,000 kgs of water bottles per year. During average trekking of a week , trekker drinks up to 50 litres of water. Each trekker leaves behind 50 PET bottles along the track. PET bottles can take 1,000 years to biodegrade. Nine out of 10 water bottles end up as garbage or litter, and that means millions per day. PET bottles require massive amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture and transport, leaving behind carbon foot prints. Billions of bottles show up at landfills every year. The entire energy costs of the lifecycle of a bottle of water are equivalent, on average, to filling up 250 ml of each bottle with oil. "Making bottles to meet Americans' demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 US cars for a year," according to the study. "Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year."

 A list of new books that are currently available and related information is presented.

Please see message below: ======= We are in process of distributing 1,000 sets of TERAFIL water filters among the victims of Bihar flood affected areas for supply of drinking water. These filters can provide at least 50,000 litres of clean drinking water every day, which can be operated without electricity by the victims easily, like any other candle filters.