Oh, it’s this topic again ! It seems for some reason, which eludes me, more and more people are buying and drinking bottled water, even if the tap water is usually perfectly fine – and 1900 (!) times cheaper. About 2.7 million tons of petroleum-derived plastic is used for making bottles every single year only in the US ! The petroleum could be used instead to fuel more than 100.000 cars, and over 90% of the bottles aren’t recycled, they just end up being wasted and polluting.
Even more ironic, out of the huge relative cost consumers have to pay for bottled water, you pretty much pay for everything BUT the water: that means that over 90% of the money go to bottling, shipping, packaging, marketing, and of course, profits ! But hey, things can get even better; not only do you pay almost two thousand times more for water, you don’t even know for sure what you get. Numerous water producers show a lack of transparency when it comes to water quality, and about 18 percent of water producers in the US don’t state where they get their water from, and more than a third say nothing about the treatment and purity of water.
“Among the ten best-selling brands, nine—Pepsi’s Aquafina, Coca-Cola’s Dasani, Crystal Geyser and six of seven Nestlé brands—don’t answer at least one of those questions,” reports EWG. Only Nestlé’s Pure Life Purified Water “discloses its specific geographic water source and treatment method…and offers an 800-number, website or mailing address where consumers can request a water quality test report.”
It also has to be said that tapwater is generally taken from good sources, and further treated and purified to. EWG recommends going for filtered tap water, which a way, way better choice, from pretty much every point of view: it’s better, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly. But the choice is yours.