This recent post from Newsmaker featured findings from a new report published by Zion Research called “Bottled Water Market: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, and Forecast, 2014-2020”. These findings show what many of us already know: Bottled water is big business.
What may be surprising is just how “big” this business is. Here are some stats from the Zion report showing the size and expected growth of the global bottled water market:
$170 billion was the approximate value of the global bottled water market as of 2014
290 billion liters (or 76 billion gallons) was the volume of the global bottled water market in 2014
$280 billion is the projected value of the global bottled water market in 2020
8.5% growth forecasted for the bottled water market from 2015 to 2020
Additional Figures on the U.S. Bottled Water Market
Honing in on the United States market, here are some interesting stats found in the 2014 Market Report Findings from the International Bottled Water Association:
10.8 billion gallons was the U.S. bottled water market volume in 2014
2.4 billion gallons increase in bottled water volume in the U.S. between 2009 and 2014
34 gallons was the amount of bottled water consumed per person in the U.S. in 2014
46% increase in bottled water consumption per person in the U.S. between 2004 and 2014 (from 23.2 gallons to 34 gallons)
Questions About Bottled Water Quality Remain
While many Americans rely on bottled water as a healthier alternative to tap water, that may not always be the case. A four-year study of the bottled water industry by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found bottled water sold in the United States is not always cleaner or safer than most tap water.
The NRDC notes in this post: “An estimated 25 percent or more of bottled water is really just tap water in a bottle—sometimes further treated, sometimes not.”
