GEOG 410 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Life-Cycle Assessment, Bottled Water, Risk Perception

• School: UBC
• Department: Geography
• Course: GEOG 410
• Professor: K A R E N A B K K E R

Document Summary

Chapter 15 explores the rise of the bottled water industry over the last few decades in terms of its causes and consequences. The risk perception and political economy approaches are used to explain how bottled water use and its environmental consequences vary by location and level of affluence. Initially, bottled water was a commodity only available to the wealthy. In the 1990s, consumption of bottled water rapidly began to increase around the world. In industrialized countries, bottled water consumption is associated with health and wealth. In developing countries, bottled water is used to replace supplies that are becoming scarce, polluted, or privatized: water has become increasingly expensive and privatized, despite its historically communal nature. Population: bottling for scarcity: there is plenty of water on earth, but it is not evenly distributed. Often the little freshwater that is available is polluted: there are also differences in how water is used.