Australians are spending an average of $580 a year on bottled water, making us the second-biggest consumer globally

On average, Australians spent about $580 buying 504 litres of bottled water per person in 2021, according to a new United Nations report.

It is the world's second highest consumption rate, per capita, behind Singapore.

Australians are also paying vastly more than anywhere else.

The report shows bottled water costs an average of $5.40 per unit in Australia — almost double what it does in North America and Europe, and about four times what is charged in Asia and Africa.

Yet the Australian market is alive and well, with the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health reporting Australia as the 10th-fastest-growing national market in the world.

So why are Australians willing to pay dearly for a product that, according to Sydney Water, comes in well under 1 cent a litre and generates vast streams of waste? 

The primary answer is convenience, according to the Australian Beverages Council, which represents the nation's producers of non-alcoholic drinks, including water.

"We buy it when we're on the go, largely," a council spokeswoman said.

Although bottled water sales fell during COVID lockdowns, there is every indication they have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

The desire to take the route of convenience and grab water on the go has created a market that last year generated $650 million in revenue, with a long-term growth rate of about 16 per cent per year, the council said.

The council could not offer any firm explanation for the sky-high price of bottled water in Australia and called it a "retail issue".

But it also suggested Australia's relatively small population could have something to do with it, along with the 10 cent refund that's built into the price of packaged beverages to fund container deposit schemes.

"The other thing I could say is that because Aussies tend to drink water on the go, they are often purchasing in convenience stores where prices are maybe not as low as you could get in a larger retail environments," the spokeswoman said. 

Water quality expert from the University of NSW Stuart Khan said the world would drown in plastic waste without a wholesale change in global plastic consumption.

He said most Australians could access extremely good, safe drinking water straight from the tap and there was "no public health or water quality advantage in drinking bottled water".

He also said container deposit schemes would never negate the damage caused by the industry's waste stream.

AAP was unable to obtain any national data on the gap between how many water bottles are sold in Australia and how many are recovered for recycling through state-based container deposit schemes.

Clean Up Australia chair Pip Kiernan said Australians should remember 90 per cent of the cost of a bottle of water could be traced back to the vessel, the lid and the label.

"You can save all that money by remembering your reusable bottle and drinking tap water or filling up at public drinking water fountains," she said.