Is Bottled Water Better?

Is Bottled Water Better?

June 2007

Bottled water manufacturers’ marketing campaigns capitalize on isolated instances of contaminated public drinking water supplies by encouraging the perception that their products are purer and safer than tap water. But the reality is that tap water is actually held to more stringent quality standards than bottled water, and some brands of bottled water are just tap water in disguise. What’s more, our increasing consumption of bottled water—more than 22 gallons per U.S. citizen in 2004 according to the Earth Policy Institute—fuels an unsustainable industry that takes a heavy toll on the environment.

Environmental Impact

Fossil fuel consumption. Approximately 1.5 million gallons of oil—enough to run 100,000 cars for a whole year—are used to make plastic water bottles, while transporting these bottles burns thousands more gallons of oil. In addition, the burning of oil and other fossil fuels (which are also used to generate the energy that powers the manufacturing process) emits global warming pollution into the atmosphere.

Water consumption. The growth in bottled water production has increased water extraction in areas near bottling plants, leading to water shortages that affect nearby consumers and farmers. In addition to the millions of gallons of water used in the plastic-making process, two gallons of water are wasted in the purification process for every gallon that goes into the bottles.

Waste. Only about 10 percent of water bottles are recycled, leaving the rest in landfills where it takes thousands of years for the plastic to decompose.

The Simple (and Cheaper) Solution

The next time you feel thirsty, forgo the bottle and turn to the tap. You’ll not only lower your environmental impact but also save money—bottled water can cost up to 10,000 times more per gallon than tap water. And because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standards for tap water are more stringent than the Food and Drug Administration’s standards for bottled water, you’ll be drinking water that is just as safe as, or safer than, bottled.

If, however, you don’t like the taste of your tap water or are unsure of its quality, you can buy a filter pitcher or install an inexpensive faucet filter to remove trace chemicals and bacteria. If you will be away from home, fill a reusable bottle from your tap and refill it along the way; travel bottles with built-in filters are also available. Finally, limit your bottled water purchases for those times when you’re traveling in countries where water quality is questionable.


Also see:

Bottled Water Has High Environmental Costs

Its real cheap, something like 30 cents to fill it up with filtered water. How pure it is, I am not sure, but I know its better than my nasty tap water. Some of that may be due to the plumbing in my area though.

we can fill a gal. jug of filtered H2O for about 50 cents!
I don't usually buy bottled water though.
Only if I'm out and about in my car and I'm really thirsty.

and they are handy to carry on walks and runs, to the frisbee golf course, and etc

Saves some money! ;)

Its so bad that we have water stations around town where you can fill up a 5 gallon jug for 50 cents.

I have a water service at home and at work that basically cleans and reuses their 5 gallon jugs.

or out shopping and terribly thirsty. I find I actually prefer the brands that are ultra filtered tap water to spring water, and they're generally cheaper, too. I do reuse the bottles at home and try to remember to take them with me when I'm out for the day. I drink tap water and I have a filtration pitcher I use for it. When the bottles finally spring a leak, they go to recycling.

I never really understood bottled water for most people. I did use it when I lived in a town whose wells had been contaminated by a waste plume from a military base, but I used a service that delivered it in 5 gallon carboys and reused the empties.

You never realize just what a luxury safe tapwater is until you lose it.

We had a water tester here that, using conductivity to measure, would tell you the parts per million (PPM) of stuff in water. During the summer months we always have bottled water here.

Material that came with the tester said that most city water would have around 140 PPM and that "hard" city water would read somewhere around 200~250 range. When I tested two different brands of water we had at the house one of them came up around 130 and the other was just over 100 as I recall. Then I tested the water out of our tap. We have a well and the water has always seemed to be pretty good. Its got a taste but not a bad taste. Anyway it came in right around 90 PPM as I remember; at any rate it was the cleanest of the three and all three were well below what I was told to expect from treated city water.

even tap water tastes ok to me (in most cases) as long as its cold. I can't drink room temperature water, just can't do it for some reason, no matter how pure or clear.

But some places just have nasty water.

I was just talking about this with my wife, saying I wanted to do some research for a filter to use on the tap. If anyone has done some homework on this and can suggest a starting point I'd appreciate reading about it.

http://www.wateruseitwisely.com/index.shtml

If not, perhaps contacting your local water authority might help.

http://www.waterfiltercomparisons.net/WaterFilter_Comparison.cfm

The central systems remove the most junk, but they're also the most expensive. Which system you choose depends on the contaminants in your water supply, how much potable water you use a year, and whether or not you require a central system for washing as well as drinking.

I know one community where people were advised not to shower in town water or well water because of the TCE pollution from a military base. Those folks would have required a central system.

My own town has a deep ground water well system and is safe, if hard. I use a pitcher system for drinking water and tea. Cooking with water from the tap is OK. A gallon of distilled water for the steam iron and car battery lasts me a couple of years.

One thing to remember is that faucet and pitcher systems do need to have the filters, usually activated charcoal, replaced fairly often. That adds to the overall cost per gallon of filtered water.

I'm actually in the market too. I'd probably go with Aquasana.

Now priced at $99 w/free shipping. Good deal.

if it kills me then it kills me, but it's free and its wet and it gets the job done.

frankly, I have always hated the taste of "plastic" that drinks come in.

People don't remember how good soda tasted in glass.

Too many in this world are doing without.

Get severe heartburn after drinking it. When we are in Mexico it is all we drink, but after one day of it I can't handle it . I usually get can juices or, soft drinks, which I raely drink even at home. I have found out that if I squeeze lime or lemon jusice into bottled water it helps.

Like others on this thread, I use bottled water very sparingly and only when other sources of water are unavailable. I will on rare occasions get sparkling water (better for me than soda) and I will use bottled water when I'm in a city with bad tasting water (Paris... there is a reason why the French are at the top of the list for bottled water) but day to day? That would be a silly waste of money for water having less testing and quality than what I get out of my tap.

Comes from municipal water plants, and the company bottling it does not do anything extra to it so basically, what your tax dollars have already paid for with pennies on the dollar is being re-sold to you at a hundred times what you already paid for it.

As for taste, that will vary from company to company, but if you've got the time, buy a bottle of your favorite water and get some of your cups/glasses out of the cupboard. Leave the room and have a friend set up 5 "stations" on your kitchen table with two cups - A and B - at each one. Have him put tap water in one cup and bottled in the other while keeping track on paper of which cup is which for each station. Come back in and do five taste tests and pick which one you like better.

If you're surprised at the results, drink the rest of your current bottle of water and just keep re-filling it from the tap. You'll save money and the environment.

TlalocW

The water there has gone through reverse osmosis and all that. I trust it more than bottled water, and it's cheaper.

The only expense is getting a new 1 gallon plastic jug for about 80 cents every couple of days - because I don't want melted plastic seeping into what I'm drinking.

Tap water here is not to be consumed.

http://www.waterfiltercomparisons.net/WaterFilter_Technologies.cfm

(No idea what the random question marks are about. This is just copied text from the site.)

...
It is also important to look at the advantages or disadvantages of other products or technologies even though they are not leading brands; such is the case with "reverse osmosis" and "distillation" systems. Although none of the top brands employ these de-mineralizing processes? as their popularity has sharply declined in recent years? there is an ongoing debate over the healthfulness of de-mineralized water vs. filtered water with its natural trace minerals.
While there are studies that argue both sides of this debate? the most recent and most credible studies show the benefits of drinking naturally balanced water with its natural trace minerals? is the healthiest.
From a common sense stand point? the fact that nowhere on Earth do we find naturally occurring de-mineralized water? we should realize that we were not meant to have it. In nature, all water contains traces of the Earth's natural minerals like calcium? magnesium and potassium? which is what our body is made to run on. All over the world, wherever you find the most contaminant-free, mineral rich water? you find the healthiest, most vibrant civilizations.

I don't really need extra from drinking water.

The 25 cent price for a gallon of this water is a far better deal for me than spending paper money on smaller bottles.

I'm a college kid. We're notoriously poor. ;)

While we here waste it.

The drop of water
hangs from the faucet
pulsing, the heart
of the well still beating

I never drink water
Harold Elm told me
even from the sink
without sayin
a prayer of thanks

the drp of water
trembles, holding
the face of all the worlds.

-- Joseph Bruchac

So I bought a filter pitcher for them and I drink bottled water.

One day I found my cat with her whole head down into my glass of Brita water. One taste and after that day that cat would die of dehydration before she touched tap water ever again. -- it now has to be refridgerated Brita water. LOL :)

... I woud drink tap water but I do find these days that bottled water is far more dirnkabe. If it could be teleported to the shops I'd go for that or maybe they could do a re-fill system. This is where recycling bottles is a must really.

When they take it from people who need it or cause unnecessary emvironmental damage to get it just to make a profit, to me that is immoral. The bottled water industry rakes in more in a year than the pharmaceutical industry. They have used subliminal advertising and lies to make people think that bottled water is necessary in their lives, when it is not. There is clearly just a profit motive behind it, and as more companies like Nestle, Coke, and Pepsi move into this market we will see more unnecessary depletion of resources. When I look at stories about small villages in South America and Africa where they do not have sanitary potable water to bathe in or to treat medical ills, or even to drink, and then go to my grocery store and see rows of juiced water, flavored water, and water of any kind put out there for our pleasure and their profit, it actually sickens me. So while refilling bottles is a big step to overcoming the waste and pollution it brings, where they are getting the water is in my view also a question of morality.

I heard that people who drink a lot of bottled water, are getting more teeth cavities, especially in children.

on trips or for walking or sports. I refill the things, because my city tap water (Detroit water system) seems fine, as good as bottled.

A side-note for airports. TSA won't allow the 16oz bottles of water through the checkpoint. But, they allow empties. So I just fill a few at a water fountain on the "secure" side, and then I have water for the flight.

I use a filtered water pitcher and it tastes just as good as the bottled water without leaving the huge number of empty plastic bottles to throw away. In the long run it saves a lot of money too, as you pay a lot of money for those plastic bottles that end up in your garbage.

from the plastic bottles, as they also do with any beverage packaged in plastic.

filter my tap. I think bottled water is a total waste, although I can't convince my kids of that. What I find disturbing is that there is supposedly a global water crisis on the horizon and companies are buying water supplies..water privatization is being led in South America by one of our beloved companies, Bechtel. I think the bottled water push is to get people used to having to pay a premium for water period.

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/deadinthewater/barlow.pdf

Maude Barlow gives good information in this brief and she is correct in that communities have to join together to stop it especially now with climate change coming into play and droughts making water more scarce, just like the people of Bolivia stood up to Bechtel.

Bottled water is UNREGULATED and not necessarily clean. What they call "spring water" is usually WELL water. It makes me SICK when I see people at warehouse stores bringing home huge pallets of those stupid little bottles.

If you insist on using bottled well water, and are using that much, at least get one of these:



then bring a damn Thermos with you!

The big jugs are reused over and over.

Bottled water is a horrible scam in so many ways, it's all part of an effort to change the conception of water as part of the commons to being a commodity to bought and sold at a large markup.


Wish I could rec your post more than once.

Multi-national corporations want to privatize it all. It is part of the plan to privitize our entire lives, and they must not be allowed to do it to water.

It comes from 450 feet below the surface of my front pasture, under various layers of rock and sand.

It's better than city water, too. It's untreated with any chemicals, and tests clean.

I surely hope to see a day when water is declared a human right and poor people throughout this world have equal access to it without the interference of bloodsucking multi-national corporations and governments using this crisis to their own advantage. If the current rapacious pace of water waste keeps up along with the predicted rise in population and effects of global climate change that have already begun with accelerated glacial melt throughout the world we will be looking at water wars. We will dearly pay for our indifference to a problem we had every resource to solve now. I can only hope that those of us talking about this are getting through to someone. Thanks for the responses.

http://www.water.org.
http://water-is-life.blogspot.com

Also showed how easily people can be led to believe they are getting something special if they are told it's designer water (and they served it from the garden hose!)