I basically refuse to drink bottled water if I am anywhere where the water is safe to drink and doesn’t taste like sulfur, unless it is the only thing available. The tap water where my aunt lives in FL doesn’t test well for pollutants, and so they are constantly buying jugs of water at the grocery store.
I don’t understand why they don’t just install some kind of filter, at least on their kitchen sink; it’s got to be less of a PITA than schlepping jugs from the grocery store all the time. And yes, they use jugs of grocery store water for cooking. Once I filled a pot from the tap at her house to boil pasta, and she yelled at me, grabbed the pan out of my hand, and dumped the water into the sink.
And yes, if I am going out somewhere where I know I will be thirsty (biking, an outdoor concert, on an airplane etc.) I bring a refillable water bottle. It saved us a ton of money on overpriced bottled water in Paris, for example. I’d rather spend the money on delicious French food!
I wasn’t joking; one of the things that makes municipal water taste bad is chlorination and I believe the chlorine dissipates if the water is left out (or in the refrigerator).
Sorry. Your phrasing immediately brought that line to mind and I simply had to post it. Like farting…it displeases everyone else but I sure feel better having gotten it out.
Also, you’re right about the dissipation of chlorine. I’m no Water Scientist but I’ve heard the same.
So it seems to me that this whole bottled water thing is kind of multifaceted.
We have the situation where people buy bottled water instead of using tap water for drinking and cooking at home. To me, this seems like a situation where some combination of filters and political pressure to not have crappy tasting water is appropriate rather than buying water at much increased cost.
In addition, I’ve noticed that around here (NE Dallas), the primary users of the bottled water and purified water dispensers seem to be low income hispanic immigrants. I suspect they’re just in the habit of not trusting the tap water. Which is sad, because that’s an expense they don’t need to incur, as our water is safe and while not awesome tasting, it’s not terrible either. I don’t know about routinely buying bottled water for say… going to the gym, or for drinking during the morning commute; it seems like the best thing would be to furnish your own reusable bottle and use tap or filtered tap water.
The second situation is convenience- a lot of people buy bottled water when traveling or otherwise not able to use the tap, or in situations where there is no tap. I’m personally fine with this- it seems like a perfectly reasonable situation for the use of bottled water if you don’t want soda, or some other flavored beverage.
The third is much like the second- people who actively enjoy various specific mineral waters, a-la Gerolsteiner, San Pellegrino, Perrier, etc… That’s fine as well- I don’t consider them much different than liking a specific soda or tea or something like that, since they have a specific flavor profile and are clearly a luxury product.
I guess it all depends on the scope you apply to the word “scam.” I think the issues here go beyond selling an empty bottle or a bottle of sewage as “water.”
If I sell a candy bar for $100 to a person with deep psychoses or dementia, and we’re both completely happy with the transaction, there’s no scam, right?
And even then, investing in a filtration system is a better move than buying all your water at a truly insane markup.
Note that there are significantly better (and better-value) filtration systems than the ones sold on the end cap at Home Depot. We have pretty good well water but the conditioning system leaves a tang I don’t like and there are occasionally other issues. The prior owners had installed a $300 Home Depot thing that worked, but the (proprietary) filters cost over $100 a set. I tore it out and bought a low-end commercial-grade system with double the capacity, 5-stage filtration (vs 3), and for which a set of commodity filters runs about $40… for the same $300-odd.
And there are better systems, including ones that will turn near sewage into drinking water, for no more than $1000.
I have a case of bottled water in my car for when I am thirsty and don’t have a glass of water. I also drink bottled water when I am running and do not have access to a drinking fountain.
No one (reasonable) has ever argued that there’s no place for bottled water.
My contention, which seems to be paralleled by many of the posters here, is that marketing it and selling it alongside soda at much the same price, and with endless vague claims of healthiness and the like, is a corporate scam.
The case in the car is the last one you ever need to buy. You can just refill those bottles with fresh tap water and they serve the exact same purpose.
As for the running water, do you carry it with you or do you buy it on the go? If you carry it with you, refilled bottles will work just as well. You can even carry the empties home since they are a lot lighter than the full ones. If you are buying them on the go, well, I understand. The water you buy hasn’t been weighing you down on your run and it’s probably cold to boot. I get that bottled water from a store is more convenient. I buy it myself from time to time. But please reuse the bottles when you can and at least recycle them when you can’t.
And three decades ago, if I wanted to buy something to drink while I was at a baseball game, or an amusement pack, or a convenience store while I stopped to get gas, I would have had to buy a soda or juice or maybe iced tea (and I don’t recall unsweetened being a thing in those days). Marketing pressure may be the cause of some people drinking bottled water at home* , but when you’re out and about, the choices are:
carry enough water in reusable bottles to last the whole time you are out (which can be difficult if you are spending 12 hours at an amusement park) and carry the bottles around all day
buy some other sort of drink- which generally will be more expensive than a bottle of water- maybe not by much, but usually IME a 20 oz soda costs more than a 20 oz water.
buy bottled water
With those choices, buying bottled water doesn’t seem unreasonable. And as far as price goes that doesn’t make it a scam. What it costs to make and the price have the loosest of relationships - I don’t pay less for unsweetened iced tea than I do for sweetened, and I can buy a warm 2 liter bottle of Pepsi for less than the price of a cold 20 oz bottle in the same store. The market has at least as much to do with the price as the cost.
Before bottled water was a thing (like in the 50’s and 60’s, some of my relatives lived in my current neighborhood which was served by well water at the time. The water tasted so bad that they would regularly drive 5 miles or so to my grandfather’s house to fill five gallon containers because his water came from the NYC municipal system and tasted better. I only bought my house because I was able to confirm it had been switched over to the city system.
No, you would have used the drinking fountain, something found in far fewer places these days - especially ‘captive audience’ locations like stadiums and amusement parks.
It’s easy to find niche exceptions, but the absolutely massive rise in sales of comparatively expensive, “brand name” bottled water - especially that which originates from the same city water system as the tap - is absolutely, 100% a marketing-driven phenomenon. The drink companies openly admit it. (The guy responsible for Dasani was appalled, *appalled *he tells us, that people were being forced to buy unhealthy Cokes… so he created a water “brand” that just happens to sell for the same amount and essentially created a new, high-value market for CCC.)
Bottled water has a place and a purpose. Bottled water that sells for more than about a quarter of brand-name drinks and was shipped more than 50 miles doesn’t - except as a profit-bearing scam benefiting no one except the food conglomerates.
Bottle from a water bottle tastes stale after a few days. And I don’t own any water bottles that would fit in my cup holders. And I do bring a plastic solo-knockoff cup when I know I will want to drink, but sometimes I forget and sometimes I run out.
Given the recent “scandal” of a woman caught using a water fountain as a doggie bidet in Central Park, I think I will avoid refilling my water bottles with fountain water for a while
No, I wouldn’t have. How would you know better than I what I did 30 years ago? You weren’t there. I stopped drinking from any sort of drinking fountain over 30 years ago - between seeing kids spit in them, seeing people let their dogs drink from them and seeing the mold behind one that was being replaced , I just wasn’t willing to do it.
I have very hard water and it doesn’t taste good. I’ve been thinking of investing in a filter but it’s easier to drink bottled (although I buy it in the extra large containers and reuse the smaller bottles. However, my favorite water is NYC tap (they’re not kidding about its quality) so if I lived there, I would just be drinking tap water all the time.
It is mostly a scam. The vast majority of bottled water is simply carbon filtered tap water. Now there are a lot of reasons to want to drink carbon filtered tap water but paying $1/bottle for them is really only worth it for the sake of convenience. Some bottled water is much more than this but then you are basically no different than the guy that drinks diet coke al day and no water. It might help if you let us know what you dank more specifically. In many cases, you are just paying a high premium for marketing.
