World’s priciest places to buy water

Oslo emerged as the city where a bottle of water is most expensive, and is almost triple the median price in 120 cities surveyed by Holidu, a search engine for vacation rentals.

Tel Aviv, New York, Stockholm and Helsinki are the next most expensive locales to purchase a 500ml bottle of water, Holidu said in a study released on Thursday.

The company’s water price index compares and analyses the costs of tap and bottled water in 30 US and 120 worldwide cities, selected due to their popularity as tourist destinations.

Oslo also holds the top spot for tap water prices, while Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco and San Diego are among the 20 most costly in the world. In Oslo, tap water is 212% more costly than the median of 120 cities in the survey and bottled water is 195% more expensive.

“The results are a real eye-opener when thinking about how much we are willing to pay for something that we take for granted as a basic necessity,” said Johannes Siebers, CEO and co-founder of Holidu.

Climate change is affecting the availability, quality and quantity of water needed for basic human needs, with 2.2-billion people without access to safely managed drinking water, the UN said in a report last year.

Holidu’s index examines both tap and bottled water, analysing the quality and cost using different sources, including the price of a bottle of Danone’s Evian, Nestle’s Perrier and the local Coca-Cola brand.

“Bottled-water consumption has skyrocketed over the last decade and shows no signs of slowing down,” Siebers said. “It’s projected that the global market for bottled water will reach $307.6bn (R4.52-trillion) by 2025.”

Boston ranked highest in terms of water quality among US cities, and was 24th overall.

Athens, Montreal and Rome were highly ranked in water quality, yet prices for the tap variety were below the study’s average. Innsbruck, Austria, held the top spot in water quality.

Water quality was most dire in Lagos in Nigeria, Karachi in Pakistan and Dakar in Senegal.

Water problems in Nigeria’s financial hub of Lagos will continue to be an issue as the country deals with booming population growth. The city has a projected population of almost 15-million this year from about 325,000 in 1950, UN estimates show.

By 2047, the number of people in Africa’s biggest economy is expected to be larger than the population of the US, all living in an area the size of Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona.