If you’re looking at bottled water for the health benefits, then there are a lot of factors that determine whether it makes sense. How good/bad is your tap water? What brand of bottled water are you getting.
If you think you’re being “green” by drinking bottled water, you’re fooling yourself. The fuel costs for shipping the water, added to the bottle itself, make it anything BUT green.
But groman called it, as far as I’m concerned. The big advantage of bottled water is that when I’m stopping at a gas station, or wandering around somewhere unfamiliar, bottled water is a known quantity that includes a handy dandy bottle to carry it in. Well worth the buck or so.
As others have explained, those of us with wells use electricity to pump the water out of the ground. No electricity = no water. But that can be the case in cities, too. It takes power to get the water up to your 53rd-floor apartment. If the building loses power…
$4.00 worth of electricity will pump a LOT of water out of the ground. Once I get my windmill set up, it’ll be basically free.
I really don’t understand how so many people say they can’t taste the difference. There are some bottled waters that taste like tap, but many that don’t. Aquafina and Sam’s Choice taste remarkably different, with that slight bit of sweetness, to the point where I think that, although Aquafina doesn’t list any additives, there must be the same ones as the Sam’s Choice.
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You are aware, aren’t you, that Aquafina (Pepsi brand) is just filtered tap water? So is Dasani (Coke brand). That is what they mean when it says “Public Water Source” on the label.
The concept, “tastes like tap” is meaningless. Tap water varies massively in taste, not just from region to region, but city to city, and even building to building.
Pick a bottled water (plain, that is, not flavored or carbonated), and there’s probably tap water somewhere that tastes just like it.
I’m surprised that you like distilled water. My understanding is that most people find that it tastes “flat.” There’s a reason why some bottled waters start with highly filtered water to which they add a trace amount of minerals.
OK, I don’t get it - why are people making the price comparison between the water in a water bottle and the water available at the tap? The act of bottling adds a great deal of cost, and if what you want is a container with water in it, that act adds a great deal of value.
Any reasonable consideration of the cost of bottled water ought to consider it as bottled water per se. The water content inside, by itself, isn’t bottled water, and isn’t the only thing you pay for.
Calcium Carbonate is one dissolved solid in our water. Aalong with Magnesium Carbonate. I yes to think the same thing. But what is in the water that will attack brass? That is one of the things that worry me.
Most of the water despencing machines are owned and serviced by an outside company. They are more than just standard filters, most use reverse ossmosis. In fact most of the non spring water bottled water is RO water.
I used to whine and bitch about our town’s terrible water. After four years in places where I must carefully boil or distill my water in order to avoid potentially deadly and certainly unpleasant diseases, I’m looking forward to the freaking miracle of clean safe water delivered to the inside of my home 24/7. I can’t wait for the now-surreal feeling of filling a cup from the tap an drinking it. Trust me when I say if you didn’t have it, you’d miss it!
Pure WAG here. But in some apartments I’ve lived in, the water stank. You know you’ve moved into such an area, because the water company sends quarterly messages, confirming that the latest tests shows their water meets or exceeds all possible regulations for quality – it is not over chlorinated, under chlorinated, or full of particulates, toxins, pesticide runoff, and they will tell you, again and again. I never complained, so I don’t know why they’re so defensive. But … the water from the tap stank, like old socks, or mildly bad body odor, or something. And the smell was transferred to dishes and glasses when rinsed and filled with bottled water. So I got on the Brita water filter kick (PUR or whatever on sale) I know it’s not necessary. But why does the water from the tap smell like 10% of it has just rinsed a mule’s backside.
I know some places over-chlorinate to compensated for bacterial load. I know such water is safe to drink. But why does it smell bad, and why should I endure it when options are available?
Taste, pure and simple. When I lived in NYC the water was quite drinkable as others have noted. Where I grew up (outside of Harrisburg PA) our tap water was from a well, and had been through a water softener, and it was horrible. I never drank tap water there. Here in Fairfax County Virginia, it’s certainly safe to drink, it just doesn’t taste all that good. If I need to take a drink out of the bathroom tap, it’s especially bad (maybe because the water has stood in those pipes a bit longer than from the kitchen tap).
So we used to buy bottled, but now we just use a Brita. Lot cheaper, gets rid of just enough of the chlorine taste to make OK-tasting, and saves a buttload of wasted plastic.