[Macoozie]

Are you on the bottle? Very hard water around here. A good multi part filter and softener system does a pretty good for general home use. Three houses all with different water; 1 public, two private. I'm partial to my private well water. Also use a water recovery sytem for re-deploying that Gray Water into productive use.

[dp0622]

Have to admit for all it’s faults, NY has very good tasting water.

I’ve gone to states where I couldn’t even gargle with the water.

Of course, well water rocks.

[wrench]

The real health hazard is the sugar water industry.

Hello adult onset diabetes.

[bgill]

Bottled water tastes awful.

Our well water can’t be beat. Great tasting stuff. Not filtered. Straight from the ground.

[exDemMom]

That article is an ad by Sodastream.

To me, the thought of carbonating water or any other beverage is gag-worthy. I suppose that carbonation may hide the flavor of bad tap water, but I would much prefer drinking filtered water, whether I filter it myself or buy it in bottles.

Carbonation makes things undrinkable; it hurts to drink carbonated beverages, and they have an off-taste.

[Baynative]

There's a good chance that your water comes from California, a state experiencing the third-driest year on record.

The details of where and how bottling companies get their water are often quite murky, but generally speaking, bottled water falls into two categories. The first is "spring water," or groundwater that's collected, according to the EPA, "at the point where water flows naturally to the earth's surface or from a borehole that taps into the underground source." About 55 percent of bottled water in the United States is spring water, including Crystal Geyser and Arrowhead.

The other 45 percent comes from the municipal water supply, meaning that companies, including Aquafina and Dasani, simply treat tap water—the same stuff that comes out of your faucet at home—and bottle it up. (Weird, right?)

But regardless of whether companies bottle from springs or the tap, lots of them are using water in exactly the areas that need it most right now.

(MJ-2015)

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

:: bottled water industry ::

Julia needs to come out to WTX and have some fun drinking our “tap-water”.
Sorry, we don’t supply Imodium for visitors.

[fruser1]

To me it’s convenience, however I don’t buy every bottle. I refill them for a bit till they get nasty. Refil from pitcher filter w/tap.

I guess I could use a canteen. I find the bottle easier to carry. For trips, I also get a large bottle from which I fill the small one.

My “system” is cheaper than buying drinks along the way. Obviously costs more than tap-only, but there isn’t always a tap around where I go.

Plus, the tap can be nasty. No matter how clean things are coming out of the public treatment facility, it still has to travel through miles of pipe to get to your tap. If you have bad tap water, it’d be that course that messes it up.

[umgud]

Go to the mini mart for $2.50/gallon gas and go inside and buy $20+/gallon water? Nah, too many work-arounds.

[DugwayDuke]

I grew up in Southern Oklahoma on a small oil lease. There were about seven homes, all supplied from a single water well. When I grew old enough to venture away from home, my dad showed me the well and how to get water directly from the well head.

The water was fresh and clear and so cold it hurt your teeth. Cold is good on an Oklahoma summer day when the temp hits 104.

[ctdonath2]

One market I haven’t seen solved well:
How to purify tap water such that one can put it in a bottle for a prolonged period? Advantage of bottled water is you know it’s shelf stable indefinitely.

[discostu]

If cities would do a good job of treating the water before it hit our taps there wouldn’t be this industry.

[Ouderkirk]

I buy bottled water for when tap on water is unavailable like camping and boating, hunting etc.

[alpo]

The federal excise tax on sparkling wine and Champagne is $3.40/gallon.
The tax on wine that is not carbonated is $0.17/gallon on the first
250,000 gallons a winery produces. It goes to $1.09/gallon on any more than that.
The 20x rate for sparkling was established in 1934 on the premise that only rich people drank wine containing carbon dioxide.

[Wheelman81]

For the past couple of years I’ve been subscribing to a number of on-line fitness/nutrition letters, and all have had similar negative stories about bottled water. We seldom use it: once in a while on a trip, or during a power outage. While it may be a racket, I sympathize with those who feel they don’t have a viable alternative. Good water was always a problem in rural upstate NY, where I lived for 5 decades. There, the major problem was the prevalence of sulfur water.

I now live in MA, where the major problems are acidity and hardness. The water from our well was destroying hot water heaters about every 2 years until the previous owner bought an acid neutralizer. We had the water tested a year or so after buying the place, and the hardness was off the charts. So we bought a softener/conditioner. There is a total of about $6K worth of treatment equipment in our basement, but the water is now wonderful. Did we pay? Certainly, but at least we don’t have to depend on bottled. I never buy bottled if I can avoid it, and I would never live where I had to accept municipal water either. We now enjoy the best water of my 62 years, and no more fussing with Brita either. I also bought a gasoline/LP generator so I can rely on the well during a power outage. (Now I just need to harden the entire installation against EMP! LOL)

[SIDENET]

My favorite bottled water is vodka.

[PAR35]

Julia is obviously not very well traveled. I’ll read her report when she goes to Midland, Texas, and drinks some unfiltered tap water. She can follow up with a chaser from Flint, Michigan.

As for SodaStream, well, the Dispys and NeoCons ought to keep them in business.

[Redcitizen]

I’m not addicted to water, I can quit anytime.

[trebb]

We keep bottles water (Sam’s Club from Walmart) to carry in our cars (saves a lot of money vs. buying it for 5-6 times the cost at a convenience store) and use a Black Berkey water filter for tap water because the local water isn’t too good w/o removing a few particles.

[TexasTransplant]

I’m a tap water guy, the only thing about Winter is that water comes out of the tap cold.

Yaeeeeeah team