A UN academic think tank said on Thursday that the bottled water market saw 73 percent growth from 2010 to 2020, and consumption is on track to increase from around 350 billion litres in 2021 to 460 billion liters by 2030, according to the UN's Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
The institute's director, Kaveh Madani, said in a statement that the rise in bottled water consumption reflects decades of limited progress in and many failures of public water supply systems.
Developing nations depend on bottled water to make up for this shortfall. Egypt, which is facing water scarcity, was the fastest growing market for treated bottled water from 2018 to 2021, according to the UNU report.
The report found that Singapore and Australia were the biggest consumers of bottled water per capita at 1,129 liters and 504 liters a year. Malaysia led the world's per capita consumption, at just over 150 litres.
More than a third of Americans use bottled water as their main water source, according to the report.
Over the last few decades, bottled water grew enormous while progress was slow paced, said report co-author Vladimir Smakhtin of UNU-INWEH.
He said that governments were too often leaving the provision of safe drinking water to private actors because of the UN Sustainable Development Goal of 2030.
Concerns over poor access to clean drinking water and rising water consumption are also a concern for the environment, ranging from concerns that corporations are depleting groundwater to plastic pollution.
In the year 2021, the industry produced 600 billion plastic bottles, 85 per cent of which are likely to end up in landfills.
The market is not showing that while there is growing awareness to bottled water and plastic issues in the northern hemisphere, the market is not showing that, said Zeineb Bouhlel, co-author of the report. It shows that campaigns run by corporations have a bigger influence on perceptions that bottled water is a better option. Research last week found that plastics entering the ocean could triple by the year 2040 if left unchecked.
It is a human right to have access to free and clean water, but it is also a right to live in a world free of plastic pollution, said Marcus Eriksen, director of the 5 Gyres Institute, a non-profit.