Water is a basic requirement for all life, yet water resources are facing increasing demands from, and competition among, users. In 1992, the UN General Assembly designated 22 March of each year as the World Day for Water
(quoted from the WWD website).
Water is more than a chemical substance contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms. Water has become a reason for conflicts and a controversial commodity, and yet, it is inevitable for every human being on the planet. The range of issues that are important when looking at water is diverse, and all fields reveal the global inequalities in access to clean water. One of these issues is the commercialisation of water, which on a global scale finds its manifestation in the bottled water industry: Bottled water is one way of getting access to clean water if there is no reliable central water supply or local source of water.
Edward Stanley from University College London looked at the bottled water business for a Geography dissertation project, for which I created some worldmapper maps visualising his data from that research on ‘Commodification and Mass Consumption – The Case for Bottled Water‘.
The topics that we mapped focus on the countries of origin of the globally operating bottled water companies and the bottled water consumption in the world. The first map shows the total bottled water consumption including a world population cartogram as a reference. In addition, the countries are shaded by their per capita consumption of bottled water (a worldmapper-style version of this map is shown at the bottom of this page):
Map I: Global Bottled Water Consumption (total and per capita)
(click for larger view)