Let the Cape drink wine then

So Cape Town has 11% drinkable water: it makes me thirsty just thinking about it. Last month, my son was in a Cape Town restaurant having dinner with friends when the waiter asked if they wanted still or sparkling water. Neither, said he, they’d have tap water.

But his friends protested: did he, the visitor to their city, not know there was a massive water shortage? They should order bottled water instead to save water …

Perhaps they should have foregone water altogether and just had wine. It might have improved their logic at any rate, because all those plastic bottles of water are surely part of the problem.

Research from within the industry found that even when only considering the water inside the bottle, it takes 1.39 litres of water to “make” one litre of bottled water. That’s already 40% more than a litre from a tap.

In addition, more water is used to manufacture the bottle than there is inside it.

Take into account the water used in the supply chain to make the bottles – filtration, cleaning and so forth – and you’re likely looking at six or seven times the amount of water in the bottle.

Of course, distributing bottled water uses water too.

You could, I suppose, save Cape Town’s dams by buying expensive imported water – drinking Evian for the team – but again there’s the problem of transportation by air, on ships, on trucks, and waste disposal after the fact too, which is heavy on water in itself – to say nothing of the environmental costs.

So here’s the thing: water was first bottled for two reasons.

Number one, it is lifesaving in areas where drinking water is polluted or rife with cholera. Cape Town is not one of those areas.

Number two, it was originally conceived as a replacement for onthe-run soda; yes, bottled water was an alternative to fizzy sugar and chemicals, which is commendable. Somehow though, we ran with the idea, straight into a brick wall of stupidity.

So may I respectfully suggest that the good folk of the Western Cape drink wine instead? Yes, it takes 4.74 litres of water to make a litre of wine, but the water was likely turned to wine long before the current crisis.

Whatever, they may want to save that already bottled water for when the stuff in the taps runs dry.