Pepsi's Aquafina, the best-selling brand of bottled water, is made from “purified” tap water.

It was bound to happen sooner or later.  Environmentalists, health officials and many physicians have for years been saying that bottled water is not everything it’s hyped up to be.  Now, thanks to the power of the media, the public is ready to listen.

A Giant Industry

Drinking bottled water is, in fact, a big deal - a multi-billion-dollar industry in the US alone. Americans are drinking bottled water in record numbers--a whopping 5 billion gallons in 2001, according to the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA), an industry trade group. That's about the same amount of water that falls from the American Falls at Niagara Falls in two hours.  The market reached $9.2 billion in wholesale dollar sales in 2004. U.S. sales of bottled water rose by nearly 10 percent in 2006, according to estimates from Beverage Marketing Corporation provided to the International Bottled Water Association. Americans consumed about 8.3 billion gallons of bottled water last year - about 26 gallons per person.

Bottled water is the fastest-growing beverage category in the country and is second only to carbonated soft drinks.  Why are people so intent on spending billions of dollars on something they can get for pennies at home? It costs on average 1,000 times more per gallon to purchase bottled water than it does to purchase a gallon of water from your own tap. It’s a shame that some of the world’s most powerful corporations are privatizing our public water systems and resources, reducing our right to water into simply another opportunity to profit.  Commercialization of water undermines the idea that people are entitled to safe, clean drinking water.

All of this information is amazing when one stops to consider that over ninety percent of the cost of bottled water is in the bottle, lid and label.

Bottled water corporations have sold people a bill of goods — positioning bottled water as healthy, when in reality it threatens our health and our ecosystems, costs thousands of times what tap water costs, and undermines local democratic control over a common resource.  Water bottling is one of the least regulated industries in the US — much less regulated than our public tap water. Scientific studies even show that bottled water is no safer than tap water, and can sometimes be less safe, containing elevated levels of arsenic, bacteria and other contaminants.  Put succinctly, drinking water from a bottle is about as smart as setting money on fire.

Impact on communities and local resources

Bottled water corporations directly impact local communities. Bottling plants operated by these water giants are springing up across the US and around the world.  Bottlers extract water in huge amounts from local springs and aquifers, potentially drying up wells and springs or depleting wetlands and draining rivers, with serious impacts on the ecosystems. Nestle, a leading manufacturer of bottled water, has had to fight lawsuits in Michigan and California from opponents who charge that the company is depleting local supplies.

If these corporations are not draining local water supplies, the water bottlers take it directly from our public tap water systems — more than one-quarter of bottled water sold comes from municipal supplies. These corporations use political and economic clout to secure sweetheart deals, block legislative efforts to secure local control and pursue costly and time-consuming litigation against individuals and governments.

So critics are asking: Why drink bottled water?

After all, it's pricey. Packaging and shipping water consumes energy and contributes to global warming. Empty bottles add to litter and solid waste. And, as a rule, bottled water is no safer or healthier than the H2O that flows from municipal water systems.  What's more, blind taste tests, while wholly unscientific, often show that few people can distinguish between bottled and tap water.

No wonder environmentalists and shareholder activists are targeting Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestle, the leading sellers of bottled water.  If you Google 'bottled water' now, you'll see a lot more concern than we've ever seen before.

Drinking water is, of course, a good idea. The Mayo Clinic says the average person should drink eight 8-ource glasses of water every day (about 1.9 liters).  For consumers who want to minimize their impact on the environment and their waistlines, there's a good alternative to bottled water - namely, tap water and a reusable water bottle.

The WWF estimates that around 1.5 million tons of plastic are used globally each year in water bottles, leaving a sizable manufacturing footprint. Most water bottles are made of the oil-derived polyethylene terephthalate, which is known as PET. While PET is less toxic than many plastics, the Berkeley Ecology Center found that manufacturing PET generates more than 100 times the toxic emissions in the form of nickel, ethylbenzene, ethylene oxide and benzene compared to making the same amount of glass. The Climate Action Network concludes, Making plastic bottles requires almost the same energy input as making glass bottles, despite transport savings that stem from plastic’s light weight.

Supplying thirsty Americans with water bottles for one year consumes more than 1.5 million barrels of oil, which is enough to generate electricity for more than 250,000 homes for a year, or enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year.

Home water filtration is far more convenient, produces higher quality water, and costs a fraction of  bottled water. A quality in home water filtration system is the most economical, convenient capable way to produce high quality drinking water.  In fact, filtering out contaminants like chlorine, arsenic and lead with a quality home water filtration system just prior to use is the only way to be certain about the quality of your water.

Consumers can buy purified water. They also have the option of doing it at home.  Water purified with home water filter systems is available for a fraction of the cost of purchasing bottled water. The point-of-use countertop filter system provides water for about ½¢ cent per gallon, a considerable savings compared to the $1 or more typically charged for an 8- to 12-ounce bottle of water.  It is simply not possible for water to be bottled in plastic containers, at a bottling plant, and be purer than what you can produce at home.

When you factor in the benefits of lower cost, convenience and quality assurance, a home water filtration system is clearly the more logical alternative to bottled water.  With home water filtration you can easily re-fill your own bottles... at home... with great tasting, healthy water for a few cents, instead of dollars, per gallon.

Bottled water is neither cleaner nor “greener” than filtered tap water.

Bottled Water

Exposing the Myth

Caveat Emptor … Buyer beware!

The truth is that often bottled water is little more than tap water in a bottle. The Federal regulations that govern the quality of bottled water only apply if it is transported across state lines, and then only require it to be "as good as" tap water, not better. Most bottled water is bottled and sold within the same state to avoid Federal purity standards. There are no assurances or requirements that bottled water be any safer or better than tap water.

In March of 1999 the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released a report called "Bottled Water, Pure Drink or Pure Hype?”  NRDC's report points out that as much as 40% of all bottled water comes from a city water system, just like tap water. The report also focuses on the fact that 60-70% of all bottled water is exempt from FDA's bottled water standards, because it is bottled and sold within the same state. According to the NRDC, "bottled water companies have used this loophole to avoid complying with basic health standards, such as those that apply to municipally treated tap water."

According to Co-op America, consumers should be wary of words like pure, pristine, glacial, premium, natural or healthy. They’re basically meaningless words added to labels to emphasize the alleged purity of bottled water over tap water. The group points out that, in one case, bottled water labeled as Alaska Premium Glacier Drinking Water: Pure Glacier Water from the Last Unpolluted Frontier was actually drawn from Public Water System #111241 in Juneau.

Gina Solomon, a physician and senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, who oversaw the group's 1999 study, uses a low-cost filter at home and a reusable bottle of tap water.

"People complain about the cost of gasoline," Solomon says. "No one seems to realize that they are paying for a picture of pretty mountains on the label and a product they could get for free from their own tap."