The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : You'll pay a little more, but now you get to see the water

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 21, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

You'll pay a little more, but now you get to see the water

Karthik Subramanian

PET bottles will help consumers check out impurities in the containers Water packaging companies to comply with BIS order from October 1 by ensuring water is packaged in transparent material. Twenty-litre PET jars to replace 25-litres opaque white cans

SAFE WATER OPTION: These white opaque drinking water cans will soon give way for PET bottles. — Photo: N. Sridharan

CHENNAI: The opaque white cans that have become synonymous with most city households as the safe water option might become a thing of the past.

The Tamil Nadu Packaged Drinking Water Manufacturers Association, which has around 275 water-packaging units as members, has appealed to all its members to start using recyclable PET bottles for packaging water instead of the high-density poly ethylene (HDPE) cans. The opaque white cans are likely to be phased out from October 1.

The Bureau of Indian Standards, Central government certifying body, has recently sent notices to all 375 companies in Tamil Nadu to ensure that water was packed in containers that are at least 85 per cent transparent in accordance with the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act.

BIS director in Chennai J.T. Davidson said the transparent PET bottles would help the consumers to see if there are any impurities in the containers. "Over the past two years, we have been receiving a lot of complaints about contaminated water cans. With PET bottles, consumers will feel reassured."

In fact, the BIS rules for transparent containers were drawn two years ago but the water packaging units had moved the court saying it was not practicable.

Now the units have voluntarily come forward to comply with the rules.

Some companies have reportedly volunteered to withdraw their appeals in the court.

Better packaging will also mean an increase in cost, though manufacturers insist that it would not be drastic.

G. Vinayakamurthy, joint general secretary, Tamil Nadu Packaged Drinking Water Manufacturers Association, says 20-litre PET bottles in the market would replace 25-litre opaque cans. "With PET, air-tight packaging is possible. Also the surface is smooth unlike the HDPE cans. So dust will not settle and cleaning is better. Naturally, all this will increase the costs slightly."

While the opaque white 25-litre cans cost the packagers up to Rs.85 a piece, the 20-litre PET bottle will cost them around Rs.120. S. Srinivasan of Perfect Packaged Drinking Water said there were only five PET bottle suppliers in the city and the cost had increased with the demand as the October 1 deadline nears.

A big market

The demand for packaged water itself shows no signs of decreasing despite the Metrowater Board increasing piped water supply in recent months.

Recently, the agency had claimed that 620 million litres were supplied through pipelines on alternate days.

Mr. Srinivasan said during the peak summer this year Chennai residents bought close to 1.2 lakhs 12-litre water cans and up to 30,000 25-litre water cans every day.

During the non-summer months, the demand decreased by 30 per cent.

"But the fact remains that [the] public today has been hooked to packaged water because they trust its quality and prefer it for cooking and drinking purposes," he said.

Though PET bottles come in with the added advantage of being recyclable, the big question remains on what volume of the bottles go through a scientific recycling process.

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