Aquafina is tap water. July 27, 2007 Jill Shocker. Aquafina also tastes disgusting, in my personal opinion. Really, if you like your water purified, get a Brita or a filter and re-use your water bottles. There is no need to muck up the environment with millions of used plastic bottles.
It’s not just a matter of what you like to drink, it’s about what you should drink. Even the US our tap water is not always safe. Some cities have outdated lead pipes, some water treatment plants don’t work, and lots of our water is polluted. And those filters you recommend don’t remove lead. 40% of Washington DC tap water has toxic levels of chlorine: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2007-07-19-dc-water_N.htm 10% of US tap water doesn’t meet EPA standards: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19872160/ It’s not just potable water we’re short of. We’re short on water, period: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/08/EDGOTQ8JBS1.DTL
Aay-men to THAT! There is a notion out there that reusing your water bottles can allow bacteria to breed, and I just need to point out that it’s the stupid squirter tops that allow bacteria to get trapped, NOT the regular bottle-top bottles. (Does that make sense?) Wash ’em out every once in a while and you’ll be FINE. We had a filter installed in our house because Minneapolis public water, while clean enough, tends to develop an odor in the summer. Bleah! AND they’ve been adding enough chlorine to choke a horse for the last several years, which I’d rather not drink. The filters are relatively expensive, I think, but last a LONG time. The only time we get actual bottled water is when we go on trips/camping, and then we pack our bottles out and recycle them. *steps gingerly off soap box and sidles away, wondering where THAT came from…*
I am not really a bottle water guy, but in some areas the Brita water filter is pretty useless. When I was in law school, the local water source had a large amount of Calcium Carbonate in the water. I religiously had a filter, which doesn’t remove Calcium Carbonate, and quickly got a kidney stone during my 1L year. I moved to getting generic water from the grocery store and have not had any problems for years. This sounds awful, but the urologist was talking about how the Calcium Carbonate in the water was a huge boom to his business. However, you are right. Aquafina is not very good.
I’d rather see people drinking bottled water when they want a cold drink than the 160 calories’ worth of corn syrup in a Coke. Even diet drinks are still filled with unneeded chemicals. Why is the anti-bottled water campaign ignoring the problem of fizzy drink containers? If you live where the tap water tastes foul, or the chemical content disagrees with you, bottled water is the way to go. I agree that drinking water out of little bottles at home is silly and wasteful. There, the 2.5 gallon size makes the most sense, or water delivery, or a reverse osmosis unit. Another reason people drink bottled water in public, is that the drinking fountain, especially the kind that cools the water, is going the way of the payphone.
get a Brita or a filter and re-use your water bottles. Oh man, and here I thought I’d stumbled upon some genius insight the other night when I realised that hey, I could have more cold filtered water in my fridge if I started refilling my water bottles in addition to using my Brita! 🙁
I used to use a Brita. Unfortunately, it doesn’t remove fluoride from the water and I have no desire to ingest fluoride. One of these days I will have a reverse osmosis system installed in my house…then I can go back to drinking tap water. Until then, we refill jugs/dispensers with the filtered/purified water from the local Whole Foods Cooperative.
the water in your faucet is far more regulated and tested than bottled water. the environmental working group did a study on it that you can google, tho ive read a better one that i cant find that mention bottled water coming from sources under factories, next to expressways, just all sorts of nasty places. perhaps if i read the LA times article theyll mention it, regardless, i call foul on our unsafe tap water, that stuff is tested frequently, your bottled water, not so much. dont reuse the plastic water bottles tho, they break down and drinking tiny plastic particles cant be healthy, reusablebags.com sells the stainless steel klean kanteens and the super cute swiss sigg bottles. from ewg Bottled water is required to be tested less frequently than tap water for bacteria and chemical contaminants, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration bottled water rules allow for some contamination by E. coli or fecal coliform, contrary to EPA tap water rules which prohibit any such contamination. so if youd rather drink crap than flouride, more power to you, but ill stick with my brita.
i try not to reuse thin plastic water bottles. They weren’t meant to be reused over and over. And whether the plasticizers used to make the bottles are carcinogenic or not, I still don’t want to drink them. I have a hard plastic nalgene bottle that I used for a few years but it’s really hard to clean. I’ve taken to using a glass mason jar.
I never understand why so many people seem so shocked to discover that bottled water is quite frequently just tap water. Where do they assume it comes from?
With all of the various brands out there, they can’t possibly all come from pure stream/spring sources. I would also assume most places would be more protective of their springs than to let pepsi or coke come in and bottle it all away. Maybe I’m strange, but I always assumed that bottled water was tap water. And I drink it like it’s going out of style (I reuse my bottles, and use a cooler at home). I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was actually filtered tap water. I have a weird water tick–I’m very sensitive to the taste and smell of water, and I’m very picky about what I’ll drink. I learned from moving around that tap water in different areas tasted differently. I just assumed Dasani and Aquafina came from public water systems that tasted slightly better than mine.
To clarify, I was suprised to learn that it wasn’t just tap water, but that they actually filtered it as well. In my mind they may as well have just put the bottles straight to a faucet. My dad was a plumber, though. Maybe that had something to do with it.
My ADD causes me to lose things constantly. So I reuse a water bottle until I lose it, and then I buy a new one. I know I’m contaminating my body with phthalates and bacteria and all sorts of other things. But I can’t afford to be buying a new Nalgene bottle every week when I’ve lost the previous one.
Just to clarify, I meant re-use water bottles that are meant to be re-used — the ones you can throw in the dishwasher and clean.
I drink bottled water at work but (a) it’s sparkling water, so I get some value for my money and (b) we recycle pretty religiously because we get to use the money from the recycling center for pizza. I’ll also carry bottled water with me if I’m out all day because I am not pleasant to be around when I’m dehydrated. (Turns out that IBS acts up when you’re dehydrated.) At home, we have a pitcher with a Brita filter in our fridge. When you live in an earthquake zone as I do, having bottled water on hand is a necessity, not a luxury. I don’t mind Aquafina, taste-wise, but I HATE Dasani water. I hate that weird, flat, overly-filtered taste. It doesn’t even taste like water to me. I’m still convinced that my all-time favorite bottled water came from a hose in somebody’s backyard but I didn’t care — it was tasty.
If you drink a lot of water, buy a Nalgene. They’re unbreakable, and washable. And they don’t harm the environment. No more buying overpriced tap water in plastic Aquafina bottles.
The problem with bottled water is two-fold, one the polluting plastic bottles and the increasing private ownership of water here in the US and around the world. No one should own one of the essential components to human life, ownership of water sources is a threat to us all.
This from the linked piece: “Pepsi and Coke do not make a lot of profit” on bottled water, Kolpak said. Would he say that under oath, I wonder?
Another thing, it takes a bottle-and-a-half of water just to manufacture the bottle the water comes in. And the fossil fuels used to transport all that water. Here’s a good article about the whole thing.
“I have a weird water tick–I’m very sensitive to the taste and smell of water, and I’m very picky about what I’ll drink. I learned from moving around that tap water in different areas tasted differently.” You’re not the only one. I could pass a water taste test with flying colors. You could put tap water in one glass, Fiji in another, Aquafina in another, and Dasani in another. I can tell the difference. As much H20 as I consume, I’m not taking it from my faucet. Not only does tap water taste horrible, think about what it collects as it moves through the dank pipes in your home/apartment. Does the government test those? I drink Aquafina religiously. One more thing we don’t agree on, Jill. If we ever meet, how long would it take before you’d bust a wine bottle over my dome in the heat of an argument?
I do it for convenience. It’s there, it’s cold, I’m thirsty. I don’t drink pop so I don’t consider it as wasting my money, even if it is just tap water. It tastes alright to me. Then I found out how much energy and water it takes just to make that one bottle of water. So I’m thinking I won’t be doing that anymore. I do have a Brita pitcher (more for the convenience of ‘It’s cold already!’ than anything health/taste related). I was checking out those Nalgene bottles and I might get one — those are much less tacky than some of the other water bottle containers I’ve seen. The only ever “real” water bottles I’ve ever had were either included on bicycles or given away at some event with a corporate logo/school name/Bible verse on it. They always left my water tasting plastic-y, which is why I’ve stuck with buying whichever brand a nearby vending machine is selling and reusing the bottle for a couple days. So I guess what I’m getting at: do Nalgene bottles make your bottle taste plastic-y?
…and by that last sentence, what I really mean to say is: Do Nalgene bottles make your water taste plastic-y?
I’ve bought Aquafina when I want water and the Coke supplied convenience store on the way to a jobsite offers nothing else, but I agree, the taste is horrocious. Here in my locality the drinking water comes from a spring fed lake and is regulated and filtered damn well, we have nationally top ranking tap water and its pretty good cold. I think it is better than many bottled waters I’ve tasted. I also have no fear of flouride, despite the research. I grew up in a flouridated community most of my life and never saw a rotten tooth — ever, nor did I ever witness suffering from the results of flouride ingestion that measurably contrast with that of the non-flouridated community I live in. Just recently they’ve added flouride to drinking water in many communities here. What I did notice was the amount of dental destruction in this community, most markedly noticed among the poor who cannot afford costly dental work. Loss of teeth and gum disease are serious problems that can cause extreme social ostracization/stagnation, (which results in less economic viability also) poor diet and untold physical suffering. I know that’s a deviation, but I had to put my two sense in about flouride. I also agree with those who noted the serious problem of privately owning a water supply. A huge ruckus occurred awhile back in this state when a group attempted to get rights to bottle water from a spring-fed pond. The environmental impact would have devastated the area beyond restoration and wasted what is now a precious natural resource, important to our survival and the ecosystem. Possibly the group did get their precious permit to begin their destruction, I haven’t heard much about it lately. I also read somewhere that a French water company just a couple years ago was able to purchase ‘water rights’ from an desperately impoverished African nation, was it Senegal? Already, the people there are suffering for lack of potable water supplies as the community supply chain is curtailed and controlled. This is the kind of ‘capitalism’ — that the Republicans like to call a free market system, my ass it is.
Nope, I haven’t noticed any plastic undertones in the water stored in my Nalgene. Even when I lazily used to make hot tea. One word of advice–get a wide necked model. They’re a little hard to sip out of but much easier to clean and put ice cubes into. I’m still not convinced that drinking out of plastic all the time is that great. I dunno.
One word of advice–get a wide necked model. They’re a little hard to sip out of but much easier to clean and put ice cubes into. They’re a lot easier to sip out of if you get a splash guard that fits in the neck. I have several tiki-shaped Nalgene bottles that I’ve fitted out with splash guards, so I always have a couple of cold ones on hand.
Something else to consider, if you care about the taste of the coffee/tea you make at home… I use bottled water in my coffee press because the fluoride (and other additives) they put into our tap water influences how well your favorite caffeinated drink will taste. People who use paper filters in their electric coffee machines, inferior coffee (Folgers, Maxwell House, etc.), and tap water are begging for a terrible tasting final product. I use freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee beans, bottled water, and a coffee press. Big difference.
I use freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee beans, bottled water, and a coffee press. Hopefully, this public service announcement will excuse my participating in thread drift: Supposedly, drinking filtered coffee is better for your heart. I pulled this quote off the americanheart.org website: “ Studies consistently have shown that drinking a lot of French press coffee increases low-density lipoproteins (LDL), the bad cholesterol.”