$6.03 for a gallon of water?!!!

The BBQ Pit
1

I’ve been getting headaches lately, and my wife has been getting after me to take water with me when I go out. Also she claims water is a lot healthier than diet pepsi which is what I usually quench my thirst with. Well yesterday, for the first time in my entire life, with no tap water immediately available I brought a litre of bottled water to the counter of a convenience store. “That will be $2.24 Sir”

Whaaaat?! You have got to be kidding me. I expected to pay something for packaging and profit but water is so abundant around here (if you’re near a tap) and we even water our lawns around here for hours at gallons per minute. Well I sheepishly paid and expected to drink the tastiest water I ever slugged down. What a disappointment. My tap water tasted as good if not better.

Some may remember my recent thread lamenting the price of gas which was at 98.5 cents per liter which I converted to US gallons and US currency coming up with $2.65 USD. On the same basis, that bottled water cost me $6.03 USD.

How the fuck can we complain about spending so much for a manufacured quantity based on a finite resourse, when we’ll spend at least twice as much for a resource which literally rains down on us forever and ever? That was the one and only bottle of water I’ll ever buy .

2

Heh. I’ve been saying the same thing every time someone complains about high gas prices.

3

If you’re interested, check out the episode of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit about bottled water. It’ll make you cry. You’re not only paying $6 per gallon for that water, it’s essentially tap water from the bottled water manufacturer’s municipality. Except it’s regulated by the FDA and not the EPA (in the US, at least…dunno about Canada)…which means it’s covered by less stringent quality control standards than your local tap water…yech…

4

If your budget permits, buy a 1 micron filter & tap for about $150. It’ll pay for itself in six months.

5

I’ve always wondered why people buy 20 oz. bottles of water for 1.00 when a *gallon* bottle costs .95…

6

Cause that gallon bottle doesn’t fit in my cup holder. Duh!

7

This is why I filter my water at home and carry it in my reusable Nalgene bottles.

The 500 mL and 1 L size fit so conveniently in the side pockets of my backpack. When I’m biking and I need hands-free access to water, I use my Camel Pack.

Much more economical than buying bottled ‘spring’ water, and tastier. I highly recommend the Nalgene bottles. I haven’t been able to destruct one yet. :slight_smile:

8

Yeah, but it often has a really refreshing name, like Yosemite or Alaskan Glacier. Regardless of the fact that it comes from a garden hose in Dayton.

I watched that episode last night. Is it true that P&T sell bottled water on their website for $150?

9

Oh, and I was reminded of the purchase of a cow-orker years ago. He bought an energy drink for maybe $2.50. It resored electrolite balance. It was sugar free. It was sodium free. It was caffeine free.

It was WATER!

10

Buy those big cullegans bottles, you’ll have to pay a 5$ deposit, but after that it is much cheaper to get it refilled than to buy small bottles of bottled water.l

11

Exactly.

Coke recently admitted as much about its Dasani water, and a few weeks later had to recall a batch in the UK because Bromate levels in the water exceeded legal levels.

The funniest thing is that, according to this BBC page, the UK advertising slogan for Dasani at the time was:

“If you want to find the source, you have to go up, against the current.”

Yeah, to the local council’s water reservior.

12

Fan of bottled water checking in here. Let me qualify: discriminating fan of *some * bottled water checking in here.

Most bottled water is, as noted above, merely tapwater that’s been, at most, filtered, and then branded. And then of course marked up. This is the kind of bottled water that only retarded people buy, and the kind of water that is the subject of so much justified vilification in this thread.

The “original” brands of bottled water were, however, spring water that had unique properties and was therefore deemed worth the cost and effort of bottling it at point A and shipping it to point B, for us non-retarded and discriminating people to buy.

My favorite brand, for instance, is Mountain Valley, which is bottled in Arizona and is well worth the money I pay for it.

The difference between bottled water that is worth the added price and that water which is not is, to me, the mineral content. My favorite bottled waters are heavy with minerals. Each has its own unique composition and a distinct flavor. Mountain Valley is so loaded with minerals that it leaves a nearly sandy film on the inside of the bottle and has an almost caramelly taste.

The filtered and branded waters that are being so rightly objected to in this thread start out with BAD water and then, by filtration, SUBTRACT minerals and things from it. Yuck, and retarded.

If you’re gonna spend hard earned money on a bottle of water, I totally agree that it better offer MORE than the same volume of tapwater does; not LESS.

(AFAIK, these are authentic “mineral” waters and worth the extra money: Evian, Perrier, Mountain Valley, Pellegrino, Buffalo Springs, and of course many many morel. These are simply filtered–diluted, if you will–tapwater: Hinckley and Schidt, Dannon, Your Local Grocery Store Brand Here, etc.)

Read the labels people.

13

Here’s a link from Mountain Valley’s webpage. (It’s from Arkansas, not Arizona.) A link at the bottom of the page takes you to a page about bottled waters in general. It’s pretty self-centric, but has some interesting info nonetheless.

Oh, and I mostly don’t buy bottled water nowadays, because you can’t get get Mountain Valley in Seattle. Anyone who wants to undertake to send me a case or two, feel free to contact me. :smiley:

14

Mountain Valley? Wouldn’t that pretty much amount to Plains?

I can see one clear reason to buy bottled water, and that is when the tap water available to you is clearly horrid. That is the case for me at work. The tap water here smells a little – well, putrid. And even then, I’ll buy a bottle of Dasani and just keep refilling it from the bubbler. I figure I’m paying for the bottle, not the contents therein.

15

I pretty much only drink water. So much so that we bought a super deluxe water filter (which takes up an entire kitchen cabinet, but oh so worth it). I highly recommend to anyone that buys cases of bottled water to buy a filter such as mine. In the long run you will save money and have better tasting water.

The funny thing is, once you start drinking super filtered water, you can really taste the nuances of different brands of water.

Yes, it is true that some water is just tap water from Michigan (or wherever). I buy the bottled water when I forgot to pack one from home. I prefer to buy the water (at its inflated price, even) over soda.

16

one thing I was going to add:

I don’t know if it is coincidental or not, but ever since we have been using the filtered water, we have noticed a change in our dog’s appearence:
You know how white dogs get those tear stained brown-around-the-eye look? Our dog doesn’t get that anymore. The other dog doesn’t either, more than likely, but who can tell on black fur?

17

You might save a little money by buying a bottle of soda, dumping it out, and filling it with mountain spring fresh tap water.

18

Yes; the tapwater in Chicago is among the best in the country, so I bought very little bottled water when I lived there. The water in Seattle is pretty bad though, so I tend to buy it more often out here. And I use a filter on my tap, which I wouldn’t do in Chicago.

19

<hijack>
I can break Nalgene bottles with my bare feet. However, I’ve not met another person who can do this.
</hijack>

20

That’s what I like about France. Here a can of Coke costs 1 euro (in the grocery store - in a restaurant it costs about three times that) and a 1.5 liter bottle of Vittel costs 50 centimes. When I lived in the US I drank soda nonstop, now it’s far more economical to drink bottled water. Maybe that’s why people here are so skinny.