Here in Chester UK the tap water seems fine. The only time I buy bottled water is for occasional convenience when traveling. Otherwise, I consider bottled water to be one of the genius marketing scams of the last 100 years… talk about markup!
How can it be a scam when the good taste is well worth it? And around here a case of 24 500-ml bottles of real spring water can cost as little as $2, which barely covers transportation costs. To be fair, that’s when it’s on sale – it’s usually more like $4.
Did you read the rest of the thread. Do you know what the costs are for packaging, transportation, maintenance on machinery and other associated things involved with bottled water?
@xtenkfarpl may have been specifically referring to places where the tap water tastes just as good as bottled water.
But I can’t help speculating whether there would be more of an incentive to make the tap water taste good if bottled water weren’t so popular and widely promoted. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might even suggest that the water utility was getting paid by the bottled water companies to make sure the tap water didn’t taste too good. (Note: I don’t actually believe this, but if it were revealed to be true in some location, it wouldn’t totally surprise me.)
I think the main interest of water utilities is to not get sued, so they undoubtedly believe that too much chlorine is better than too little.
But at least the raw material is almost free. Just turn on the tap. Come on, you know it’s a marketing genius scam!
Fair enough, maybe tap water where you live is rather nasty?
Mind you, I’d like to see some double-blind tests of whether people can really tell the difference…
I 100% guarantee you that you can tell the difference between tap water here and bottled water. There’s even a difference between bottled waters which I didn’t actually believe until someone proved it to me. Additionally, water from the tap isn’t free. You pay for municipal water.
Bottled water is filtered and in some cases trace minerals added. Anyway, as I said, I don’t like all of the plastic either so I filter the tap water myself with a Brita pitcher.
Same here, reverse osmosis filter. It’s a simple alternative to buying plastic bottles. I don’t know why more people don’t do it. Having an undersink filter is much more convenient than lugging home cases of plastic. Plus it removes many more contaminants than Brita or PUR.
All the excuses people make for using hundreds or thousands of plastic bottles a year are ridiculous. Everyone thinks that they’re a special case for why they must buy cases of water all the time.
Around 500 billion plastic bottles are used worldwide yearly, with 35 billion empty water bottles discarded in the US alone. However, only 12% of these bottles are recycled , and 91% of the world’s plastic bottles are not recycled.
(Bolding not mine)
I know that where I live, the tap water is fine to drink and yet I see my apartment building neighbors coming home with multiple 24-packs of those 500ml water bottles.
No, the water in this area isn’t particularly nasty – I’ve felt the same way about tap water in many other places, and some people have told me that the tap water here is actually better than at their location. But I just can’t stand the stuff.
As for blind taste testing, it’s been done. One time when I was out of bottled water, I filled one of the water bottles with tap water and set it on the counter to have later in the evening with some medication. I’d forgotten that it was tap water and when I took a sip later expecting the refreshing hit of spring water and getting tap water instead, I almost puked. When anyone tells me that I couldn’t tell the difference, I laugh!
I considered RO. You are definitely correct that it removes way more stuff than the Brita some of which is nasty if it happens to be in your tap water but a nice system with installation will cost several hundred dollars. It also removes the Flouride and some of the minerals that people find beneficial. Some of the benefits of the minerals is the taste that people prefer. On the plus side, it’s set it and forget it with very infrequent filter changes. Way less of a pain in the ass for larger households.
Yes, that’s true, it’s a big upfront cost. But it’ll pay for itself many times over. I’ve had mine for at least 20 years. Probably more like 30+.
Isn’t that the case with bottled water?
You are so right. I recommend it!
The bottled spring water in this area (and probably almost everywhere) has naturally occurring minerals that probably contribute to its good taste, as shown by the fact that pure distilled water tastes pretty flat and unappealing to most palates. The most abundant minerals in one brand I have in front of me appear to be calcium and magnesium.
Taste buds vary. I’ve drunk bottled water when I couldn’t get anything else, or when it was what somebody handed me. It’s consistently tasted worse to me than most tap water (as well as much worse than my own tap water.) If I’m at somebody’s house and they’re offering bottled water, I’ll usually ask if I can’t just fill a glass at the tap. (Occasionally they answer ‘we’ve got sulfur water’, in which case I might take the bottled. But most people I know with that problem just put a filter on one of the taps.)
I grew up before bottled water was routine. Everybody drank the tap water. Almost nobody complained about it. I agree: it’s mostly a marketing scam. A few people may have taste buds that genuinely make the stuff taste better to them than the tap water; and some places do have worse than usual tap water.
That’s true, but we’re talking about the difference between spring water produced by natural processes versus water coming out of a municipal treatment plant. Which one do you think our taste buds evolved to respond more positively to?
I have no idea. I am comparing Brita to RO.
So that’s like, what, 50 cents per day for the non-sale price? Say $180 per year. Filters for a reverse osmosis system cost about $60 and are good for 1-2 years. The system itself costs about $200 and can be installed by anyone with even rudimentary handyman skills.
And Jesus, even if you’re committed to bottled water, why would anyone buy 500 ml bottles? A gallon jug gives you the same water and produces way less plastic waste and less chemicals leaching into your water.
Oh, got it!
Even if water at the tap source were filtered, the travel through municipal and household plumbing can contaminate it, and of course groundwater that comes from wells or ‘hard’ municipal water can come with highly objectionable taste. Some of that can be filtered out with physical filtration but reverse osmosis is essentially the only way short of distillation to remove all minerals. That being said, the cost of filtering water and buying a few stainless steel or glass storage containers is cheaper than even a year’s worth of ‘cheap’ bottled water, and it just makes sense from a fiscal perspective to avoid buying bottled water except in an exigency. Packaged water is an exemplar for the thoughtless convenience of modern society which fails to consider the externalities and problems of sustainability in its use.
Whether you drink water from plastic bottles or not, you are assured of getting a large dose of microplastics and polymer residues in your diet because essentially all food that is processed or cooked in water will have some degree of contamination, as does any seafood and many other sources. The reason to avoid bottled water is to reduce the pollution of plastic bottles and packaging, which as noted above is not effectively recycled and either ends up in landfills (from which residues can leach out until the landfill is lined with impermeable clay) or end up in the environment and are unwittingly consumed by animals. Anyone who has been to islands in the Pacific and seen the literal mounts of plastic that accumulates on beaches regardless of regular cleaning can attest to just how much waste there is, and any field zoologist working with sealife or birds can attest to how much these animals end up ingesting with detrimental health consequences.
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