Bottled Water: Who Needs It?

Panorama: Bottled Water - Who Needs It, BBC One 8.30pm Monday 18 February 2008.

In the UK last year we spent nearly £2 billion buying bottled water, yet a billion people around the world don't have access to safe drinking water.

On Monday Panorama looks at the impact the success of our bottled water industry is having on the environment.

Former BBC Environment Correspondent Tom Heap examines the UK consumers love affair with bottled water.

Sales of bottled water have boomed in recent decades, growing 200-fold from the 1970s.

But a litre of one of the UK's most popular French mineral waters generates up to 600 times more CO2 equivalent than a litre of Thames tap water.

Water tasting

The programme travels to Fiji where some of the more expensive bottled mineral water comes from - yet one in three Fijians do not have access to safe tap water.

Panorama also attended a water taste test undertaken by sommeliers - to see if experts could tell difference between some of the most expensive mineral waters and the liquid coming out of London's taps.

Panorama: Bottled Water - Who Needs It? BBC One 8.30pm Monday 18 February 2008