Okay, I don’t know for sure that bottled water is a scam, but I had to come out strong. My dad sent me the Ideal Bite Tip from the other day that suggested using home filters to clean your water rather then bottled water. It made me think about how ridiculous I think the bottled water industry is.
I haven’t been alive that long, but I clearly remember when there was no such thing as bottled water and I didn’t think twice before drinking my water straight from the tap. Now a days kids I work with think having to drink water from the tap is disgusting. Here’s an anecdotal experiment: I am not more sick or had diarrhea or any other ailments now then I was ten and fifteen years ago when I was also drinking tap water. In the meantime, I can’t go to a meeting at work now were a pitch of water is available, it’s either bottles or soda.
I could be wrong, but here’s a brief collection of facts on the bottled water industry…
From Ideal Bite on the benefits of filtering rather then bottling:
- Save the 1.5 million tons of plastic expended in the bottling of 89 billion liters of water each year.
- Get rid of contaminants normally found in tap water such as chlorine, cryptosporidium, Giardia, lead and pesticide runoff.
- Save money – Pitcher or faucet filters cost about $600 over 5 years. Bottled water services or bottles cost nearly $2000 in that same timeframe!
- Filters are a safer bet – up to 40% of all bottled water comes from a city water system, just like tap water.
Not that I’m advertising filters either, but I think we need to consider we’ve really been advertised into this bottle water craving. Here are a few more links: