What do you really pay for when buying bottled water?

Less than 1 cent—when buying bottled water, that’s how much you pay for the life giving liquid itself. What about the rest of the price? Does buying bottled water even make sense? We checked it out!

There have been many heated discussions about drinking water over the years. More and more people are giving up on buying bottled water, deciding on drinking tap water. They don’t want to pay for something they could get basically for free. In the same time they emphasize that tap water is as healthy as water wrapped in plastic. Or even healthier.

It doesn’t mean that the bottled water market in Ireland is trembling with fear. It’s quite the opposite – with the recent healthy living craze we buy even more water than ever. It’s one of the most basic products in Irish homes. Every year we spend over €76.5 millions on bottled water!

So what do we exactly pay for when buying the water in store? Do the manufacturers actually take advantage of us? We’ve decided to delve into the subject and check what’s really behind the bottled water price.

What do we analyze?

We’ve decided to look into 1.5 L bottle of water of one of the most popular brands. Its retail price is €0.78.

At the very beginning we need to note that the analyzed water is spring water, which means it’s poured into bottles without additional water treatment or mineralizing. Why is it important? Keep reading!

From underground to the store shelves

The journey of spring water to the store shelves starts underground. From there it’s taken to the bottling plant, where it’s packaged into plastic bottles.

This whole process costs around 8% of the final price. We need to add also the bottle’s cost – when buying the water in a store, we pay around 3 cents for the packaging. One fifth of the money we spent covers the bills and employees’ salaries.

Later, the water goes from the bottling plant through distributors and wholesalers to finally end up in the store. The cost of transportation makes around 17% of the whole price. We need to add also the margins of manufacturer, wholesaler and retailer (together around one fourth of the price) and VAT (spring water is charged with standard 23% rate).

The rising costs of bottling and transportation are the reason why the bottled water is getting expensive over the years.

Cents for water, millions for marketing

Where’s the place for water in this calculation? Its actual cost in 1.5 L bottle is… less than 1 cent! It turns out that when buying bottled water we pay mainly for the packaging, transportation, production costs and marketing.

Marketing is in fact the crucial factor for the biggest brands. Celebrities recommending the water in ads, labels with idyllic mountain sceneries, campaigns explaining that water plays a key role in our life… All these cost a lot of money, and with the increasing competition, every company is trying to come up with new ways to persuade us to pick their bottle from the store shelf.

After all, it requires tremendous effort to convince us to pay for something we have at home for free, right?

Cheaper from tap… and healthier!

Natural spring water (which makes most of all the bottled water in the market) contain a very small amount of minerals. They don’t have a taste, so they’re perfect for making tea or diluting juice – however, they don’t have much in common with health. By drinking spring water not only we don’t supply the essential nutrients, but quite the opposite – we flush them out of our systems!

If you care about minerals, it’s better to buy a bit more expensive mineral water or simply drink tap water. Most of tap water contains around 500 mg minerals per liter – similar to bottled water with medium mineral content. Tap water is subject to strict controls (even more rigorous than the ones conducted in the bottling plants), meeting high standards of quality and purity.

The information stated above are based on the manufacturers’ reports, international carriers’ offers, data sets found on the professional websites and more. Of course, they’re not a perfect reflection of the reality but only estimation that we used to show the products’ journey to the stores. Not many companies share the details of manufacturing and distribution of their products. By taking a closer look at their prices we want to encourage discussion and above all—conscious shopping!

About VAT: this tax is charged on the net price, which means net price = 100%, gross price = 123% (100% + VAT 23%). Consequently, VAT makes approximately 19% of the gross price.

Here you can buy bottled water and simply do your grocery shopping: HelloFresh, Tesco and Deliveroo. With Picodi, you can save in these stores by using our cashback and discount codes.

Check what you pay for

Take a look at our Real Price of Goods series and find out what’s the price of: