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I do, mostly because my municipal tap water really sucks and gives me a tummy ache. I never leave the house without a bottle of water.
But I don't like feeling that I'm falling prey to a marketing campaign, and I hate all the plastic produced/consumed by/for the bottled water industry.
I buy cases of bottled water to keep beneath my desk at work. Water out of a vending machine here is $1.25/bottle, and cases are less than 25 cents/bottle.
I could take the effort to fill up bottles with tap water, I guess, but it's worth 25 cents to me not to have to do that.
Whenever the topic of bottled water comes up I'm reminded of that scene from Reality Bites where Janeane Garofalo's character turns to the group and says--you know, I just figured out that Evian spelt backwards is "Naive".;)
I used to drink plain tap water, till ikkyu2 complained enough about the chlorine taste that I bought a Britta. I wouldn't have thought there would be a difference, but there does seem to be.
I buy bottled water occasionally when I'm walking around and get thirsty. The only brand I buy for taste is Evian -- which sounds ridiculously pretentious, I know. But I do think it tastes amazingly good. When I drove up to Sonoma for my birthday a few years ago, I bought a bunch of bottles to take with me in the car as a birthday gift to myself. :)
(Yes, that may have been the most pretentious paragraph every written in the history of the intenet. Sigh. Sorry.)
I buy a bottle of water once a week, and then fill it up from our water cooler at work. I don't know why, but actually buying it helps me to remember to drink it. The only other time I buy bottled water is if we are having a party. Other than that, I drink tap water.
I've got a filter at home, and I usually carry around one of those hippie/outdoorsperson-style bottles, but I still occasionally buy bottled water--while I like the taste of filtered water just fine, I like the taste of spring water (my faves are Trinity and Mountain Valley Spring) even better. I'm bothered a little by the waste and expense, though, so, usually, I only buy bottled water when I'm, y'know, giving myself a treat.
I only buy it when I'm giving a presentation - I need copious amounts to keep my mouth from drying up. We're lucky at work in that we have free vending machine tea, coffee (espresso, latte, decaf, espessochoc - mmmmmm!), hot chocolate, carbonated and hot+cold water. They've also just introduced a Fair Trade machine with a minimal cost of 50p a cup. But bottled water does seem like an absolute con + if you're throwing the plastic bottles away after each one, it's very bad for the environment. If I had a problem with tap water, I guess I'd buy a water filter and a re-usable cup thing to drink out of. But, as it is, I live off coffee at work.
I don't - unless I get thirsty and I'm out somewhere and it looks good and cold and delicious, more than the soda I would otherwise get. I don't buy it to keep around the house, make coffee with, etc.
I've been lucky to live where the tap water tastes good, mostly. The marketing-tool angle on the bottled water bothers me; it's been well demonstrated that it's not healthier than tap water, and in fact about 25% of it actually is tap water from somewhere or other. Also the environmental anglejust awful -- all the plastic, and then again all the fossil fuels used in shipping bottles of water around the country, when you could fill up a glass or a reusable bottle at the tap and enjoy it without creating new disposables.
I will admit that I refill my Nalgene bottle at the Poland Spring dispenser at my job - but that's only because it's nice and cold. If I could get away with re-filling the jugs with tap water and chilling it, I would. But the delivery guy would notice.
I filter my water here, because it tastes gross, but I used to buy bottled water - not Drinking Water, like Dasani or Aquafina, but actual Spring Water. I do drink water out of the cooler at work, but I try to use only one plastic cup a week, and I'm thinking about switching to a more durable drinking container.
I buy bottled water when we're having visitors, 'cause the tap water here in northern Florida is pretty hard (calcium and magnesium) and visitors from Memphis and New York complain they can taste sulphur, but this water is actually good for you, and if we just drank bottled water, we'd miss our flouride, too. We make coffee with jug spring water, because it is easier than cleaning the calcium deposits out of the kettle, or the espresso machine.
Like all good ol' Southern boys, we drink a lot of sweet tea in the summer, all made from tap water.
Like gaspode, I like to buy a bottle, and then reuse it until the cleaning people at the office think it's trash and throw it away. Repeat. Tap water is fine by me- NY water tastes fine by me. But I can't drink tap water in FL- tastes AWFUl (didn't think that when I lived there; just when I go back). I can barely shower in it.
visitors from Memphis and New York complain they can taste sulphur
Yes, we can!!!
I do occasionally buy bottled-water but it's mainly due to lack of clean cups rather than fear of municipal water. Hell, our water is used in Miller Beer.
Fish swim in it, people bathe in it, I'd rather have beer.
I don't really care and usually drink tap water at home and from the water cooler at work in a glass I keep on my desk, but I do buy it if I am thirsty in the street.
I'm trying to wean the kid off bottled water but she basically only drinks water -including with her lunch and she isn't quite organized enough to carry a hippy bottle yet, I bet when she gets a little older she'll want to do it on her own.
Strangely enough the only bottled water I basically can't drink though is Evian, it has almost the same consistency as saliva. So gross. It's a total racket.
Man! As with so many things, the more you learn about something, the less blissful ignorance you get to enjoy. In looking at my links I got sad about the far-reaching negative effects of bottled water production. Yeesh.
Problems with bottled water (summary from my links)
-$100 billion cost to consumers each year could pay for clean, safe water systems worldwide
-Enriches major corporations such as Coca-Cola and Nestle by creating a product which is almost all profit margin
-Tap water is subject to more stringent federal health regulations than bottled
-Bottled water contains no flouride (though this might be a plus for some people who don't believe in flouride)
-"Tap water comes to us through an energy-efficient infrastructure whereas bottled water must be transported long distances...by boat, train, airplane, and truck." That's a lot of fossil fuel to move a product that weighs 8 pounds a gallon...yet is available for free, right in your kitchen.
- "Water bottles are made with polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic derived from crude oil. ''Making bottles to meet Americans' demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year.'"
-"86 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or litter. Incinerating used bottles produces toxic byproducts such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals."
-So, recycle? "Of the bottles deposited for recycling in 2004, the U.S. exported roughly 40 percent to destinations as far away as China--meaning that even more fossil fuels were burned in the process."
--Regional communities suffer worldwide from the water extraction industry. "More than 50 Indian villages have complained of water shortages [DaSani sources]...similar problems have been reported in Texas and in the Great Lakes region of North America, where farmers, fishers...are suffering...as water tables drop quickly,''
Do any of you guys use Earthen or Clay pots??
Those are great to keep water cool, and I swear--once you get used to drinking from them--you're not going to feel like having water from the fridge.
It is fine. People tend to think that it's going to be awful, but New York City's water is not from New York City. It's imported from mountainous areas to the north and west -- extremely pure and tasty water supplies that are not located in industrialized areas.
Earthen pots? Now that sounds like a good idea. We use them in the museum I work for, and now that you mention it, everything you pour from them tastes very cool and refreshing. Red earthenware (redware)was the standard, everyday household ceramic until the mid-19th century. Maybe it's time to go back to that.
It's so much more fun to research random stuff than to, you know, work or something.
I occasionally buy the stuff for the convenience of the container, but no other reason. The one exception to this, however, is Pelligrino and other bubbly waters. If the City of Portland supplied us with bubbly from a tap, I'd happily drink that. Of course, I'd like have another tap that dispensed slices of lemon to go with it.
RE. hippie bottles, I wouldn't be seen with one under any circumstances.
I like Evian. It tastes good and I don't care what it spells backward.
Though at home I usually drink the filtered water from the dispenser on the refrigerator. I also have a Brita. I think the Brita water tastes better than any bottled water but Evian.
Come to think of it, I don't even drink tap water. Coffee in the morning, beer at night, and the occasional milk or Nestle Quik when I have a dairy craving. Those all have water in them, though, I guess.
I do the same thing gaspode does -- I buy a bottle of mineral water (usually Borjomi because it comes in 1 litre bottles which fit nicely in my bag) and then keep refilling the bottle until it's no good anymore. This usually takes a month or so). Then the bottle goes to where other plastic bottles go (they are recycled) and I buy a new one.
I used to use aluminium bottles, but I kept losing them all the time, so I switched back to plastic ones.
Why not just get a home filtering unit, like most people use here?
Is Aquaguard a company you guys familiar with over there??
It's almost in every other home over here, and now we've got other competitors vying for the market as well.
The one exception to this, however, is Pelligrino and other bubbly waters.
Yeah, I drink at least a liter of sparkling water a day. I've learned that this is very much a West Coast thing (my grocery store carries at least half a dozen different brands), and that it's hard to find sparkling water when you venture right-ward across the country.
Case in point, when I visited my family at christmas (we were in AZ), I was looking for my fix in the supermarket and couldn't find even Pelligrino. My brother was kind of being a butt that week. His suggestion: "Just give her a straw. She can blow bubbles and make her own sparkling water."
I buy a bottle of water once a week, and then fill it up from our water cooler at work.
I do that, too!
At home we use a Brita filter because our water is so "rusty" in both taste and appearance. And I buy bottled water when I'm out and about and don't want a Coke, such as in situations where I'm sweating a lot.
I knew Dasani and Aquafina were no more than repackaged tap water, and would never buy them until they squeezed out all the smaller, actual-spring-water varieties. Now in a lot of stores and whatnot, those are your only two choices. That pisses me off.
I suspect our problem is not really a need for purer water -- after all, the Brita does that wonderfully - so much as the usual things that contribute to America's environmental problems: desire for convenience, an abundance of cheap materials, acceptance of a throwaway culture, great marketing, and conspicuous consumption ('I can afford to pay for water!')
One of my jobs is water quality/testing for my school district. I have gotten to know the people at the local water utility, and learned quite a bit about this. Tap water is fine here given the following caveats:
1. Let it run for 10 seconds or so first thing in the morning in that any dissolved lead will be from the brass in the faucet, or the solder near where the water comes out.
2. Never drink water that has been in the water heater. Much more dissolved impurities.
3. If water comes out brown at first (due to rust) it is just iron, and the jury is still out whether that iron actually gets absorbed (beneficially) or passes through you.
Since this is Eugene, I get a LOT of calls about water quality and deal with people who contend that tap water is poison (and coincidentally have filter systems to sell me) and I have taken more water samples than I can count.
Tap water is fine, although I am also hooked on plain Calistoga, just for the fizz.
I have a Pur pitcher with a filter and a cheap plastic water bottle that I fill from the pitcher. Living in Vegas and relying on public and commercial transportation pretty much demands a constant supply of water, even in "winter", such as it is here.
Miko, I think the thing is--we have so many other things to worry about, that can harm us--that water is pretty far down the list.
And this is from a guy who takes care to drink filtered water, and usually has some kind of an aerated drink when he's outside.
The drinks themselves are made from groundwater over here, and there have been constant claims running around that that's heavilly polluted too, so you don't know what to do anymore... except just hope for the best and drink whatever you can get your hands on I guess.
Tap water is gross and will give you diarrhea if you drink too much. I drank filtered water until 2002 or so, then switched to those big blue galons that you put on a support (like in offices), then when I got a real job I just bought bottled water. Restaurants there don't serve water for free (since they can't serve tap water), so if I'm outside I usually need to buy bottled water if I'm thirsty. If I buy bottles, it will probably be sparkling water.
US:
At work I hydrate myself with coffee and diet soda. At home I hydrate myself with beer. Before sleep I drink about a quart of water. I also drink a lot of water while I'm in the shower.
"...Red earthenware (redware)was the standard, everyday household ceramic until the mid-19th century. Maybe it's time to go back to that. ..."
If you decide that's what you want to do, be careful to choose earthenware in which the clay and any glazing is safe. A lot of the terra cotta sold in the U.S. isn't made for use in food service, and will leach heavy metals pretty easily, particularly if exposed to even mild acids. Fruit juices, wines, carbonated beverages, teas and coffee are all things not generally appropriate for drinking from porous or semi-porous earthenware. And storing plain water at room temperature in such things, for any length of time, encourages growth of bacteria and fungus on unglazed surfaces. The porosity that allows terra cotta to cool by evaporation generally works against sanitation, because such porous structures are great for culturing microorganisms, and nearly impossible to sanitize effectively. Standing water that isn't kept tightly covered is also a constant draw for insects, as a reproduction medium.
Although they were popular for storing well water and spring water in the days before refrigeration and modern plumbing, an old rule of thumb for terra cotta jugs is that water that isn't drunk from such vessels by the end of the day it is drawn, is poured out to wash, even if all it washes is the stone on which the jug sits.
Good point Paulsc
I forgot to mention that the the pots that are made here for storing liquids are made of a special mud, and that before you can use it to store water, you need to purify it, I guess, by keeping water in it for a couple of nights, and throwing it out the next morning, for a couple of days.
And yes--you do need to cover the pot with a lid.
I used to drink it all the time until I bought a Brita water pitcher. It filters out enough chlorine and whatever else to make it drinkable. I have a bunch of 32 ounce heavy plastic water bottles that I bought at Sam's club one time so I could take water with me to work. I keep all of those full of water in the fridge plus whatever is in the pitcher.
I can not drink our tap water unless it is filtered, especially in summer when I need to drink the most water.
If I am on a trip or at a ball game I might buy a bottle of water there rather than a soft drink or whatever.
Am I the only one with well water? Our water comes from a deeeeeep well. We've had it tested and it is super clean. I love my well water.
As the area gets more built up, however, they have been forcing people to tie into public water and sewage. (At anywhere from $10k to $25k!) That scares me.
College student here. Three people in one room, lacking basic amenities. Nearest source of water is in a really grubby bathroom two halls down. You bet your butt I buy bottled water! I prefer Poland Springs. It just tastes better than the others.
jrossi, no you're not. I drink the well water here, even though during heavy rains it could hardly be classified as clear. The small mountain above me has loads of trees and rocks to filter the rain through; it tastes wonderful and comes out of the tap ice-cream-headache cold. Also, it's probably full of those trace minerals we don't get from hothouse vegetables or bottled water. I plan to get it tested in the spring, but it hasn't made me sick yet. Of course, we'll see what happens in the summer (when many wells here dry out). The only time I buy bottled water is when I'm traveling and have no choice. I'm hooked on the Pellegrino too, but the Aranciata, and only because it makes a fine mix for vodka or Ricard.
Ditto the Brita. I've had a countertop tank model for years, couldn't do without it.
When I lived in a city with water so crappy it even smelled funny coming out of the showerhead, I sprang for a whole-house carbon filter; a big tank plumbed directly into your water supply pipe. It used loose carbon and seemed to be effective for about a year between recharges. Before the installers came I traced the water supply and found a point to have it plumbed in where it wouldn't be pointlessly filtering the outside taps (I did a lot of hose watering and that would have used up the filter medium a lot quicker) but would filter all the inside water. Sheer bliss.
Tap water, because it's free and delicious. Though I have pissed over the side of a boat into Loch Katrine, where my tap water comes from, and wonder how many others have done the same.
Brita on the counter at home. I can't handle the chlorine in tap water here otherwise - I can smell it out of the tap and it makes me dizzy, yuck, even though I use it to cook with/make coffee & tea with/bathe in, etc, with no problem. At work we have big spring water bottles & I have a glass tea bottle from the health food store that I refill with spring water until someone throws it away, then I buy another one. As a general rule I don't like to drink out of plastic. I usually do buy a bottle of water to go hiking with though - they're a nice size to carry, so that's my bad weekly buy.
My theory has long been that the whole boom in bottled water was because the government was getting us used to the fact that soon US water supplies really wouldn't be safe. Kind of a slow change in behavior and then they were just going to stop monitoring water quality and dump a bunch of chemicals in. It's been a few years and that still hasn't happened (*coughasfarasweknow*cough) but I'm still expecting it. /conspiracyfilter.
Oh and I used to live in rural Maryland with a well that was so horrible you could smell the water across the room. We bought our drinking water then, you had better believe it - I wouldn't touch that water unless it was boiled for 5 minutes or more. The kids did fluoride rinses three times a week at school - they called it Swish N' Spit and the visiting nurse would stand there grimly as each child did their fluoride rinse, because it was all well water up there. You could opt your child out if you wanted, and some parents did - and told us all at Little League about how dangerous fluoride was and how it was turning America soft and so on - always entertaining.
"and told us all at Little League about how dangerous fluoride was and how it was turning America soft and so on - always entertaining." Hell, where I grew up one of the city councilors proclaimed that fluoride causes aids. And yes, he got re-elected.
I found it amusing that when I went to a the Cayman Islands (which are practically Floridian) the bottled water on sale was genereally the Dasani and the other Nestle rubbish. The only real spring water was Pelegino, all the way from Italy. Considering the tap water there is fairly dubious, i would have thought that an island full of monied tax-dodging gluttons would have more choice in the spring water department. Then someone told me that in the US one generally doesn't find spring water on sale due to the domination of Dasani et al.
We get a far better range of spring water in the UK just about everywhere. I can usually buy a local spring water where ever I am and definately buy one of the French brands. Not that there is anything wrong with the tap water per se. The further north you go, the better the quality. Water in the Lake District and Scotland is delicious.
I use a Britta filter at home. Water bottles are refilled from it once they have been emptied of their original contents.
The geology of Florida is basically one big limestone bed - a giant filter hundreds of miles long of what were once the calcified shell bodies of innumerable ancient sea creatures. Through this, underground, nearly everywhere in the state, except the western panhandle, flow tremendous underground rivers, kept fresh by the considerable volume of rain that falls on this peninsula, and must, inexorably, head south, back to the sea. In doing so, this huge underground aquifer communicates with black water rivers (in which the river's water is stained black by tannin of leaves, but is otherwise pure and drinkable as any other surface water) and surface streams, bubbles up in mighty springs, and dives back into the limestone, to emerge in fresh water submarine springs again, miles out to sea.
There's a mighty river of good water beneath us, here in Florida, but it has minerals nearly everywhere, and a plethora of taste variation as subtle in gradation as any region on Earth supplies, from the limestone beds and local mineral deposits through which it constantly flows. If your idea of tasty water comes entirely out of plastic bottles and puny filters, I pity you your weak noses and lily livered constitutions.
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