Bottled Water is Bollocks

Why the trend in bottled water became so prevalent was beyond me until I heard reports about the quality of drinking water in some parts of the world. Nonetheless, in most First World Countries tap water is of sufficient quality that we should not be wasting our money on bottled water. Unless of course we want to impress our friends ...

Numerous studies on bottled water have raised serious questions about the value of the product and this latest study adds further weight to the claim that bottled water is largely a waste of money. It can be summarised as follows:

• Bottled water is no guarantee that the water is contaminant free. Indeed many companies will not release their own testing results of the water you buy.
• The promotional images of bottled water are very misleading, bottled water is often municipal tap water that has been purified but still contains contaminants.
• Some bottled water even contained contaminants in excess of the safe recommended levels.
• Some bottled water was indistinguishable from tap water.

You can read the full report here.

There are another important considerations in relation to bottled water. It requires plastic bottles and you may recall all the fuss recently concerning bisphenol A, a very common component in plastic bottles, is now being found to have a wide range of potentially very unpleasant health consequences. For more information this link to an earlier post of mine might help.

If only that were all. The other issue in relation to bottled water is that the manufacturing and distribution of the this product is a coal burning exercise. Even if one is doubtful concerning Global Warming, the delivery of bottled water in plastics and by transport is terribly inefficient compared to water from the tap, especially given that there is on likely benefit drinking bottled water over tap water.