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The bottled water industry has highlighted its use of recycled packaging, lighter-weight PET bottles and low-carbon production ahead of a critical BBC Panorama documentary to be broadcast tonight (18 February).

A Bottled Water Information Office spokeswoman said the sector accounted for only 0.03% of total UK carbon emissions, and was "committed to cutting its carbon footprint further through recycled packaging and innovations in extraction, energy efficiencies and transport".

"The industry has also made a significant reduction in the weight of PET bottles, which are now 30% lighter than they were 15 years ago."

She said 434 local authorities offered recycling schemes, enabling more than 14 million households to dispose of their plastic bottles, but the industry needed to have "more facilities in place to encourage more people to recycle".

"The bottled water industry has done a lot already, but we're not resting on our laurels. We realise that more could be done," she said.

Tonight's programme, Bottled Water: Who Needs It?, investigates the financial and environmental costs of bottled water consumption.

It will say that a litre bottle of Evian or Volvic mineral water produces 600 times more carbon emissions than a litre of tap water.

Danone Water UK, the supplier of the Evian and Volvic brands, would not comment before the broadcast this evening.

The firm is one of 20 companies involved in measuring the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of their brands using the Carbon Trust's publicly available specification (PAS) 2050 standard.

Environment minister Phil Woolas has said the £2bn spent by UK consumers on bottled water "borders on being morally unacceptable", and he will urge consumers to go back to tap water.