After bottled water companies draw water from one of their various sources, it needs to be transported to bottling and purification facilities. An article that Joel Fineman writes for U.S. News discusses several sources that certain water bottling companies use and the types of transportation these companies use to get their water from source to bottle. U.S. News gives the low down on where seven major bottled water companies (Poland Spring, Evian, Zphyrhills, Fiji Water, Dasani, Perrier, and San Pelligrino) get their water from and by inference how they get it from the sources to their production facilities. I will review a few just to get an idea of the different types of water transportation in the industry.
Poland Springs is located in Hollis, Maine, draws its water from the Poland Spring just outside of Portland, Maine. Traveling through pipelines into water tank trailers, the water is then trucked an hour south to the Poland Spring’s bottling facility where it undergoes purification and quality control tests.
Evian has set up its bottling facility in Évian-Les-Bains, close enough to their water source to put it directly from their aquifer into bottles. This means that the only transport this water goes through is plumbing that Evian has built to tap the aquifer and then lead to their bottling facility.
Dasani has several bottling plants that are located across America (being a branch of the Coca-Cola Company). Dasani uses municipal water sources and a, quote, “state-of-the-art multiple barrier treatment system” before bottling their water. Like Evian, the only transportation Dasani uses is internal plumbing to pump water from their source to the factory. The difference being that instead of a natural spring source, Dasani is merely using the water utility supplied by the city the factory is located in.
San Pelligrino uses water that originates from three Italian springs located near the Dolomite Mountain range. They draw mineral water, as well as naturally occuring carbon dioxide, from the sources via pipeline (it can be inferred) and carbonate/bottle in their plant located in San Pelligrino Terme, Italy (Fineman).
These transportation methods all have their own, and very different effects on both physical and social geography. The processes that Poland Springs, Evian and San Pelligrino (and many others with processes like them) have probably the biggest physically geographical impact. The pipes that these companies put in the ground to draw from their various sources change the natural landscape of the sources. Also, drawing enough water from their sources to be profitable depletes the amount that would be available for the species that exist in the area. No matter how it is done, the naturally occurring eco-system and, in turn, the physical geography that would be shaped by it are changed by the presence of fabricated plumbing.
There are social geography consequences to all of these transportations, but in different ways. Companies like Dasani and Draw from public sources of water and therefore deplete sources that would be available to the public, not to mention the fact that a lot of the areas in which their factories are located are often drought ridden. Other socially geographical consequences are the resorts that change the traffic patterns of persons to the areas where springs and bottling facilities are located. Many of the artiesan brands of water as well as those drawing from aquifers that supply springs are the sites of tourist resorts. The bottling facilities add to, and promote the tourist economy and population pattern in these towns.
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