Bottled water consumption is growing double digits, but begins to fall

The water quality in many Brazilian cities may have suffered in recent times, but the population has slowed. In recent years, the sale of bottled mineral water has been growing at a double-digit pace. Only from 2013 to 2014, consumption rose 20% and continued to grow. The market as a whole rotates at about 13 billion litres.
Last month, however, demand has been suffering with the fall in economic activity. "From the day 15 February, sales began to fall," says Carlos Alberto Lancia, President of the Brazilian Association of the industry of Mineral Waters (Abinam). The rains also hinder activity in the sector. Not because they influence the water extraction, but because people tend to consume less with rainy weather.
The market has been growing both quantitatively as qualitatively, says Antonio Vidal, Superintendent of foods and drinks of the Edson Queiroz group, which sells water with the marks Minalba and Alka. The per capita consumption, according to him, has doubled in the last ten years, mainly due to the awareness of people regarding health, beyond the heat and water issue the country faces.
In recent years, the bottlers also decided to give more glamour to their products. There are bottles of different colors, with other formats or for children. But the market is still not fully "democratic", according to Vidal. "The mineral water is very sold on the market and (B) yet," he says. "The cost of logistics is very high. It''s heavy transport water. " Edson Queiroz Group sells about 3 million bottles of 20 litres of Brasília to Belém do Pará. In other packaging, puts on the market approximately of 1 billion liters per year.
When it comes to bottles, colored or not, some stomachs wrap. The PET packaging, both bottles as other drinks such as soft drinks, when discarded at random are responsible for islands of debris that form in the oceans. Some cities, like San Francisco, in the United States, have been imposing restrictions on their marketing. Montreal, Canada, may follow suit.
"This is a question, in a way, the years 80, when they saw the bottles thrown on the streets," argues Vidal. "Today there is a minor issue of PET, you don''t see with the naked eye the packaging around." In addition, it says, the industry is committed to reverse logistics, with bottles, gathering support for the scavengers as well as reducing the amount of raw material. The group, today each has 9 grams. Ten years ago, the amount was double. "In the last three years, we have seen many breakthroughs," he says. "But it''s still not enough, we need other actions that reduce considerably the waste."
According to the President of Abinam, the production of a PET bottle is more sustainable than that of a glass bottle. "But we are not hostages of the packing industry. If the consumer wants to glass, PET, cantonada supply. " The problem is that the Brazilian doesn''t seem interested in glass bottles, which were disappearing from the market a few years ago, nor in solutions, release that made no success here.
And if the consumer thirst doesn''t want to or can''t buy bottled water? According to experts, the water concession companies comply with the standards of the Ministry of health, cleaning and removing inappropriate substances provided for by official standards.
But there are some problems. One of them, says José Carlos Mierzwa, professor in the Department of hydraulic and environmental engineering from the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo (USP), is that standards take into account human impact-protected springs, which hardly happens in the country. With the water crisis, many companies and municipalities interested in dealing with reuse water to be drinkable, but the interest has cooled down with the return of the rains. "In Brazil, we are starting to develop technology, nationalise it with improvements," he says. "But this can take a while to reach the population.
Would then be dangerous take tap water? "There has never been a proven case of contamination in Brazil", says Mierzwa. But, he advises, it is good to use some type of filter before drinking tap water, especially depending on the wealth of where is removed.