00:00Your bottled water is getting more expensive, but you're not paying for water.
00:03You never were. Bottled water is now a more than 300 billion euro global industry.
00:09In several countries, it outsells physio drinks.
00:11Prices have been climbing for years, up nearly 10% globally in 2023 alone.
00:17Then the U.S. and Israel struck Iran. Oil prices jumped.
00:20In India, packaged water prices rose more than 10% in just a few weeks.
00:25But how does that affect bottled water?
00:26The price of bottled water is because packaging is expensive, in particular the plastics.
00:32The cost of plastic is directly related to the cost of energy.
00:35The transportation of bottled water also is extremely energy dependent.
00:39Unlike food, the raw material here costs virtually nothing.
00:42What has gone up is everything around it.
00:45And yet, revenues keep rising even as fewer bottles are sold.
00:48But this isn't just about prices.
00:50For 2.2 billion people with no safe tap water, there's simply no way out.
00:55The cost gets passed directly onto people who have no other choice.
00:59What we will see is either economic impacts on those populations, as they pay more for
01:05necessary safe drinking water, or we'll see increased health impacts on those populations
01:11when they can no longer afford to buy bottled water or they buy less of it.
01:15In parts of the global north, bottled water is largely a choice, as tap water is regulated
01:20and costs a fraction of the price.
01:22But in large parts of Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, that's not the case.
01:26Bottled water is a necessity.
01:28Every price spike, every oil shock, every supply chain disruption lands on people who cannot opt
01:33out.
01:33For them, the water was never really free.
Comments