Good things are finally happening in this country, sort of.
Americans consumed 12.8 billion gallons of bottled water last year, which is a 9 percent increase since 2015, according to Beverage Marketing research. In comparison, they purchased just 12.4 billion gallons of soda, making it the first time ever that annual sales of water sales surpassed soda.
12.4 billion is still a pretty ungodly number, though. For some perspective, imagine watching water flow over Niagara Falls for about four hours. Now imagine all that water is soda. That’s how much pop we put into our bodies last year.
The average American consumed 39.3 gallons of water in 2016 compared to 38.5 gallons of soda, which feels better but not by much. That’s still about 75 percent of a gallon per week.
This could be a result of Americans trying to become healthier, but it could also be the result of new sugary-beverage taxes and smaller packaging. (Ever notice you’re now buying 16.9 ounce bottles instead of the old 20 ouncers?)
Even though it’s a victory that Americans are buying more water than soda, it’s still pretty dumb that people, admittedly including myself, actually buy bottled water. And it also isn’t great for the environment, even if every one of those bottles were recycled.
(Hint: they weren’t.)
