Bottled water

Hwhat in hydration!?

Bottled water is essentially a dirtier, ridiculously expensive version of municipal water resold in plastic containers.

Somehow,  Nestlé, and many other companies have convinced half of all Americans to buy water for 1 to 6 USD a gallon in bottle form, instead of tap water, for a fraction of a USD penny per gallon, all because of the influence of marketing and the publicized tap water contamination scares. Check your gas prices while you're at it, society.

Contents
Bottled water is the marketing trick of the century. For the most tasteless and odorless substance on the planet, companies market bottled water products as having intrinsic high quality with a silky smooth texture and taste, despite a lack of any substantiative differences between it and normal water. In Michael Shermer's article Bottled Twaddle, he reminds us just how taste-deaf our tongues actually are when it comes to nasty, boring water:

Penn & Teller: Bullshit!'s experiment illustrates the power of the only aspect affecting the taste of the water is the assumed quality through deceptive presentation.

Bacteria
It pays to be warned of what you may consume, though. In 2016, at least 14 different brands of bottled water recalled their products due to E. coli contamination, the presence of which suggests the additional presence of animal or human waste.

Hazardous waste
In one extreme case, "water, flaunted as 'spring water,' was pumped from a water source next to a hazardous waste dumping site."

Plastic leaching and cancer
According to the grape vine, frozen bottled water releases carcinogenic dioxins, reusing water bottles releases carcinogenic DEHA, and heating bottled water releases a synthetic estrogen that causes breasts cancer and hormone issues. None of these claims are actually true, except for the last one, kind of.

The health scare about heated water bottles was partly fueled from journalists taking a 2014 study by the University of Florida out of context. The study shows two issues:
 * 1) The study was actually conducted in China by Chinese students who sampled Chinese water bottles.
 * 2) The finding of the study reported water within the correct ranges of water standards.

Marketing
Evocative names and labels depicting pastoral scenes have convinced us that the liquid is the purest drink around. But labels can be misleading at best, deceptive at worst. In one notorious case, water coming from a well located near a hazardous waste site was sold to many bottlers. At least one of these companies labeled its product “spring water.” In another case, H2O sold as “pure glacier water” came from a public water system in Alaska.



Depictions of exotic mountains, crisp glaciers, and other beautiful imagery often depicted on bottles invoke a sense of purity and freshness. This eases a consumer's mind and convinces them they're making a better and healthier dietary decision.

Here's a list of refreshing terminology for overpriced, unfiltered tap water:


 * "Designed to make a difference"
 * "The secret is in the Alps"
 * "Purified spring mineral water"[Every bottled water ever]
 * "A water that belongs on the wine list"

Alternative to soda
While being vastly inferior to tap water in every way, bottled water was initially positioned as an alternative to unhealthy sodas. In a Hispanic-targeted sweepstakes, challenged families to replace sugary drinks with water for a possible cash prize:

Convenience
Bottled water is marketed as a convenient alternative to tap water. Obviously, it's much easier to spend money like a dope instead of planning ahead and filling up a container at home to carry with you, or stopping at a refill station once you run out. Unfortunately, the bottled water craze has resulted in fewer public drinking fountains, therefore, giving positive feedback to the cash cow industry.

United States
In the U.S., bottled water is regulated by the while tap water is regulated by the  It doesn't sound like much, but once you consider how the regulation process goes, the EPA goes much further to ensure the water is safe for drinking.

The FDA has two means of testing bottled water, testing it themselves and to have companies do it for them. For the latter, it goes by an honor system, therefore, companies can lie about the regulations its not abiding by. According to studies, bottled water often fails to meet EPA standards of mercury, thallium, and thorium amounts. As for the FDA's plant inspections, fairly loose regulations are also present. Here's some quotes, straight from the administration's website:

The current system in place is not preventative and is, instead, reactive to a violation of unsafe water released to the public ... after the fact. Amusingly, a handful of unsafe bottled water cases between the years 1994 and 2006 were not made public for whatever reason. Here's one more awful questionable FDA practice:

Keep in mind, the quotes from above are straight from the official dot gov website. The rather lax regulations are likely a reflection of a lack of funding or authority over the issue. Either way, Congress is to blame, not the FDA per se.

Meanwhile, tap water goes through rigorous testing, thanks to the Safe Drinking Water Act. The results show tap water has consistently less contaminants than bottled water. Despite highly publicized contaminated tap water incidents, no scientific evidence shows tap water has more toxins than bottled water; in fact, it's the other way around. Despite this, the FDA claims to have higher standards for lead in bottled water by a difference of 10 ppb because "leaching of lead from distribution systems is not a factor for bottled water and, based on its survey data, FDA concluded that bottlers can readily produce bottled water products with lead levels below 5 ppb." In contradiction, a lot of bottled water available in the United States is tap water, so "leaching of lead from distribution systems" should be a factor. However, tap water isn't free of contaminates either. According to a study, 94% of sampled tap water was contaminated with plastic fibers, although the health impacts remain unclear.

Europe
The UK treats bottled water as food:

Coca-Cola tried to sell bottled mains (tap) water under their 'Dasani' brand in the UK. They recalled and stopped production after was found in the product. "Many papers, unhelpfully for Coca-Cola, also reminded readers that while Dasani sells for 95p per 500ml, Thames Water, which supplies homes in the area where the product is sourced and bottled, sells the water at the equivalent of 0.03p per 500ml."

German law also provides for a different set of regulations for tap water than for bottled water. Needless to say the regulations for tap water are much much stricter and in fact, they may even go to your house to measure at the tap whether any pollutants are above the legal limits. As for another advantage of tap water, in Germany, you won't be slapped by the intentionally onerous 25 cent deposit on throwaway bottles; this is even more expensive than the cheapest one and a half liter of water itself.

Russia
Some areas in Russia have safe-to-drink tap water; others, not so much, though that doesn't stop tour guides from advising tourists to avoid it altogether or some restaurants serving only bottled water. Although the big cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg have cleaner water than areas in Central Russia, Siberia, Yamal, and Altai, the pipe infrastructure is pre-Soviet era where some cities have very poor pipe quality, with Kalmykia having 72 percent and Novogorod having 55 percent of pipes not up to modern standards. What doesn't help is that St. Petersburg has contained trace amounts of the  parasite. Roskachestvo serves as the watch dog regulatory agency for Russia's products, funded by the government to promote Russian stuff (something to keep in mind when looking at its research). Products that pass its testing earns a quality seal from it. Russian law categorizes bottled water in two categories: first category water, which is just "cleaner" tap water, and water of the highest category, which not only comes from "natural" sources but has to be "good for your health" to drink it. Notably Roskachestvo has noted that some bottled water categorized as water of the highest category often did not meet quality standards.

Environmental impact and waste


In some strange twist, it takes water to produce water bottles. In the best case scenario, it takes 1.26 Liters of water to produce plastic for 1 Liter of water; on average this number is 1.32 Liters. While the amount of water to make bottled water is better than other products such as soda, it still doesn't negate that companies are wasting water when tap water is a reasonable and more efficient means of getting water.

The plastic poses another issue: recycling. Sure, water bottles clearly indicate that it's recyclable, but most people don't recycle. According to IBIS World:

Plastic bottles can take 450 years to decompose if left in the environment. You don't want to make the Earth sad, do you?

Natural disasters
FEMA recommends using bottled water for emergency kits, although its reasoning behind its usage is questionable: While bottled water is not the safest, it is very reliable for emergency situations and doesn't need further treatment, unlike tap water. Although, it is best to create your own emergency supply from tap water for safety reasons.

Contamination
In Ohio, Toledo's water supply was affected by Lake Erie's algae blooms hence contaminating the water supply. In response, the city banned tapped water, prompting the Red Cross to supply the half a million of affected citizens with bottled water. The take away: bottled water is a reasonable alternative when it is relatively cleaner than the available tap water.