After reading this article, I am truly questioning the cult of bottled water. I’ve never been a huge consumer of bottled water (perhaps buying one bottle, then re-using it throughout the day), but I’m pretty turned off by the whole thing.
Who drinks bottled water? Why? If you don’t, what are your big reasons?
There’s one big flaw in that linked article.
No, they don’t. Not here. The water here is damn near cloudy and really isn’t something I want to drink. It suffices for cooking, but that’s about all. Also, this:
isn’t exactly accurate either. I can get bottled water for about $1/gallon. Still way, way more than tap, of course, but I much prefer it for drinking.
ETA: Sorry, I should mention. “Here” is Phoenix, AZ. I don’t much like Dasani, but if Dasani is Philly tap water, at least it’s not Phoenix tap water. If Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water is tap, then I’ll gladly move to wherever has such freaking delicious tap water and never buy bottled again.
I like drinking bottled water. I try to drink between 1 to 2 gallons a day, depending on my training regimen, so I usually have water with me throughout the day.
Because I can get a case of it from Costco for all of about four bucks. It tastes better, and I can haul it all around the house in a resealable container.
I don’t drink it. We have a good well here at the house so our water is as good as it gets.
I suppose if I were traveling and the tap water tasted foul I’d buy bottled, but not otherwise.
Same here in Mesa!
I buy bottled water in 2.5 gallon jugs because the water here in Santa Barbara tastes like dog jizz. I love the tap water in San Francisco, NYC and LA if it comes from the Owens Valley. I should clear out my under sink cupboard ard put in a proper reverse osmosis system, but storage space is precious. I kind of feel bad about that.
It tastes better. Much much better. The tap water where i live(Okanagan Valley, BC) has a metallic & chlorine taste too it. Sometimes it tastes so bad i can taste it right through my coffee. Sometimes it’s so bad i can smell the chlorine as soon as i turn on the tap, though that’s pretty rare, once every couple of months at most.
And i once got Cryptosporidium from the tap water here. Admittedly that was ages ago, according to wikipedia that outbreak was in '96, but it’s just one more reason to avoid the tap water for me. Especially since i don’t watch the news regularly enough to be like to catch a “boil your water” warning before it’s too late.
We live on well water here that is very high in iron and sulfur. Nasty stuff to drink, barely useful (after filtration) for cooking. We drink bottled water a lot. I like my water clear, not orangey-yellow.
I don’t, because the tap water round here is really excellent quality, so I don’t see the point.
Despite that, I see other people around me drinking it regularly, so clearly there’s some zeitgeist thing I’m missing out on. Of course, it could be just that all these people buy one bottle a month and keep filling it up from the tap, but there does seem to be plenty for sale wherever I go, so I suppose there’s a market.
I don’t drink it on a regular basis. I bring a half-gallon insulated mug with ice water from home with me when I go to work.
When I do drink bottled water, it’s usually when driving, and I prefer the bottle over a fast-food cup/lid/straw combination.
You couldn’t pay me enough to drink the tap water here at work. Water should not be that color nor should it taste like poo.
I usually buy one bottle per month and refill it from the cooler in the break room.
The tap water at home is fine.
My well-water is safe to drink, but unpleasant. It has sulfur and iron in it. For those who prefer that to paying 89 cents for a gallon of water each week, I say go for it, but I’ll stick with buying a gallon or two of bottled water for my own consumption.
Every day I thank my lucky stars that my city’s tap water is good, and tastes good. I drink a lot of water every day. Water is all I drink (except for my morning coffee, which is made from tap water) and if I had to buy it I’d be spending a fortune. I fill plastic bottles (from sports drinks my SO buys) at home and have about 6-8 that I rotate so they are all chilled in the fridge.
I do about the same thing, except that I drink tea, and I do drink milk as well as water. Fort Worth water is quite good, IMO. When I spent a weekend in Chicago, I drank bottled water. Chicago is an interesting city, and I would kind of like to live there, but they’ve got WINTER (we don’t have winter in Texas, we just have a season in which we don’t roast) and they have absolutely foul water. It’s got sulfur in it. Might have some other stuff, but it’s definitely got sulfur in it. Phew!
I can still recall, years ago, laughing at people who started to drink bottled water. I told them all to enjoy it while they could because the fad would soon end and they would never see it again because it is a stupid, pointless product. I may have been a little wrong.
Nonetheless I have probably bought about 20 liters of bottled water in total in my life. I get free chilled filtered water at work and used to get great tap water where I previously lived. Now my home tap water is crap so I use a Brita filter jug for drinking water.
I don’t care what is in bottled water, it just seems like a waste of money to me.
Even when I lived in Los Angeles, where drinking tap water isn’t the best idea in the world, I didn’t drink bottled water. I bought a Brita filter and drank water from a glass. When I left the house, I poured it into a reusable plastic water bottle. Store bought bottled water is ridiculous.
Articles like this always try to make their point that bottled water is just bottled municipal tap water. Which in the cases of Dasani and Aquafina is true but a lot (A LOT) of bottled water sold is spring water.
Spring water to me has a very different and better taste than any municiapl water I have tried.
I never buy or drink Dasani or Aquafina because it tastes no different than what I can get out of my tap. However, stuff like Zephrhills (Florida) and IceMountain (Minnesota) have a certain mineral content that I like.
I’ve got the world’s best water coming out of my well, almost ice cold, and I think bottled tastes like ass.
Was this a serious question? Most people who drink bottled water do it because their local water supply sucks or because they’re thirsty and don’t want sugar water from the vending machine.