Bottled Water

[Jeff G]

How many of you drink bottled water in your household daily? I was at a friends earlier today and we were talking about the old days and someone brought up what it was like before bottled water. Out of the group of 10 plus couples we were one of two families that doesn't drink bottled water in our house on a daily basis. When we mentioned this we were looked at as odd. Does anyone remember life before bottled water? Wasn't that just a few short years bacK?

[daparish]

We drink bottled water. I do remember the days of faucet water as a kid. I have to honestly say that I really don't know anyone in our area who does not drink bottled water.

[Magic Smiles]

We drink tap water, unless we need to take the water with us, then we use bottled water. Our tap water actually tastes really great!

[magicofdisney]

We buy bottled water for my husband to have in the car. At home my kids drink water from the water dispenser on the fridge. It has a filter built in.

Because of leaching issues I've begun reading about, we're starting to cut back on bottled water, though.

[merlinmagic4]

I started buying bottled water when we lived in a house with well water right in the area of a military contamination area (plume). It progressed to us buying individual servings of bottled water. What finally stopped me was looking at my recycling bin and thinking that it's great to recycle but we're still creating so much waste; it still needs to be dealt with (carried away, broken down, etc). So, we went back to our Brita water pitcher and here we are!

It also saves us money but the environment was my main concern.

[RedSoxFan]

We drink water from the water dispenser in the fridge. We use the bottled water when going out.

[Marker]

Tap water it is. I've never felt any reason to do otherwise.

I do carry a bottle of water in my car with me, but it's a bottle I fill from the tap at home.

I guess I'm just not trendy enough to buy in to the bottle water craze.

[IloveDisney71]

We drink bottled water at our house. Even with a water filter on our frig. dispenser our water leaves a bad afer-taste. It's weird! But I do have to say, that I do re-fill my empty bottles a couple of times from my frig. before recycling them. I just chew gum after I drink that water! I may buy one of the Brita water pitchers and see if that helps our yucky water taste better.
I don't drink anything but water most of the time, it is very rare for me to drink anything else.

[Jeff]

At home we drink tap water.
At work or on the road my family does drink bottled water.

Please spare me the landfill rant. If I drink a bottle of water at lunch or in the car when I would have had a can or bottle of pop there is no difference. I have not added to the destruction of our environment.

[DizNee143]

i drink it all..i dont care how you give me water..just give me some...its the main thing i drink every day..water is water to me..i do tap..i do filtered..i do bottled..i dont care as long as i have some to drink!

[Ruprect]

Tap water it is. I've never felt any reason to do otherwise.

I do carry a bottle of water in my car with me, but it's a bottle I fill from the tap at home.

Ditto for us! Bottled water is just too expensive for my frugal living ways and I really don't think it tastes any better. Especially since I try to drink 8 cups a day.

[January-2007]

We don't drink bottled water anymore. We have a Brita pitcher to filter our water through that we keep in the fridge. Our water here is really bad, it still tastes bad even after filtering it, but keeping it very cold helps. We have Nalgene bottles that we use for our "bottled water" needs like when we leave the house or something. Sure, on vacation we still bring bottled water with us, so it's not like a never thing, but just not an everyday thing by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I don't think we have any bottled water in the house at all!

[Ian]

Bottled water only in our house. We cook with tap water, but only drink bottled or occasionally the filtered water from the fridge door.

Sorry ... I've seen and read too many horror stories of how terribly contaminated much of our tap water is. I'm not taking the risk.

[May524]

DH and I drink SO much bottled water it's insane! We probably go through 2-24 packs a week (I take about 2 to work a day).

[laprana]

My family started out buying the individual bottles of water and eventually moved to a water cooler with the big 5 gallon bottles. It works really well for us...just fill a cup at home or a bottle when leaving and we're good to go! Our tap water comes from the Mississippi River :ack:, and even though it's treated and everything...no thank you!

[merlinmagic4]

Please spare me the landfill rant. If I drink a bottle of water at lunch or in the car when I would have had a can or bottle of pop there is no difference. I have not added to the destruction of our environment.

I'm sorry if it was my post that sounded like a landfill rant (it's the only one that mentions it). I didn't think I was ranting at all! I was just being honest saying that the recycling bins filled with plastic bottles personally bothered me. It was a personal response. I honestly don't care what you do! :D

[Scar]

My tap (well) water is great. My step grandmother drank it for 40 years and lived to be 96 so if there is any contamination, I'll take it. ;)

I guess the only thing that confuses me is why people would pay for something that thay can get for free?

[RenDuran]

We were doing the bottled water thing, but it got expensive. Plus, my recycling container was overflowing with the bottles. Ours never made it to the landfill....(jk)

Then I read an article in Reader's Digest that most bottled water is no safer than tap. In fact, it's usually just bottled tap water from elsewhere, so other than portability, it makes no sense to purchase it if you have decent tap water.

[Tonyajo]

Water is our drink of choice and as long as it's filtered, we'll drink it! I'll drink tap water, if I have to... but I'm not a fan. :sick:

We do drink bottled water at home a lot of times... but we do make sure to recycle the bottles! ;)

[Jeff]

I'm sorry if it was my post that sounded like a landfill rant (it's the only one that mentions it). I didn't think I was ranting at all! I was just being honest saying that the recycling bins filled with plastic bottles personally bothered me. It was a personal response. I honestly don't care what you do! :D

To be truthful, I hadn't even read the posts above mine. :blush: I certainly did not direct that at you. I just figured someone would come on and chastise us all for drinking bottled water.

[ElenitaB]

Like many others, I made a choice to drink a lot more water for health reasons. However, when I read about how much oil it actually takes to produce the bottle, how much fuel is used to transport that bottle to where it is filled with water, then to transport that bottle of water to where I buy it, I thought that maybe it was time to return to a Brita. Now I only buy bottled water away from the house. At home, we drink filtered water. If we're going short distances or for my DS's lunchbox, I fill up reusable, non-leaching Nalgene bottles with our home filtered water.

Another factor influencing that decision was an "ah-ha moment" while reading a Dasani label. Turns out that in our area, Dasani uses filtered Queens water! So in essence, it was water coming from the same source as what comes out of my tap, but I was paying a whole lot more for it and it does have an environmental impact.

So, no rant here... just a personal choice to try to do what's best for the inside of our bodies and the bigger "outside" my family's bodies live in.

[LauraF]

I drink bottled water at home, because my house water is really, really bad. It's so bad it killed my houseplants . . . twice . . . no joke. :(

Factors:
1. Town water is bad to start with (smell the chlorine! Mmm, yummy.)
2. Old lead-sealed pipes
3. Pipes are rusting which puts all sorts of nasty chemicals in my water

I have a Brita faucet filter to use for houseplants, pets and cooking, which gets everything but the taste out. Bottled water is for drinking by people and the occasional plant when I leave half-empty bottles around the house. I'd prefer not to buy the stuff, but I'm not investing in a really nice filter system while in an apartment.

[SAHDad]

Tap water. Periodically we buy bottles of water (the sport-top lid type) for use at the gym or on a run. Those tend to get refilled multiple times before we pitch them though.

I'll admit that I drank tap before, but after watching the Penn & Teller bit on bottled water, I felt pretty vindicated. :thumbsup:

(For those who haven't seen it, among other things, they fill glasses from a hose, but tell people that it is "Fuji Water" or something like that - and people swear that it is much better than tap water."

[PirateLover]

Ah life before bottled water... you know what I drank? Sodas and other canned drinks that are probably just as bad for the environment. As a kid I had a rough time with hanging onto things like thermoses from lunch. I absent mindedly threw a lot of stuff out, leading my mom to start brown bagging me and making sure everything was disposable. When I was elementary school (10 years ago now) the only time we used bottled water was for sports games and practices. Then somehow the craze just seemed to get bigger and bigger. Now it's to the point where if water is on sale, you better get there quick because the shelves just empty out within minutes. We do drink bottled water here. We usually get cases of Dasani from the soda/beer distributer. I do realize that it is just filtered water from a regular source but I'd like to touch on this for a minute.
Ellen mentioned that her Dasani is filtered Queens water. However you musn't think that it is the same as hooking up a brita filter to a Queens tap. My family worked for Pepsi and my grandfather used to brag about how much they prided themselves on their purification process (they were purifying water for use with their other products well before the days of bottled water). I would be apt to believe that Coca Cola, bottlers of Dasani, have the same sort of system in place.

For the record, we also drink tap water with Brita filter, and have a Brita pitcher. The thing with bottled water is it's just so convenient, especially for traveling and exercising. When you are done with it, you just toss it out. We do recycle in our home and when I'm out I do keep an eye out for bins.

[ElenitaB]

Ellen mentioned that her Dasani is filtered Queens water. However you musn't think that it is the same as hooking up a brita filter to a Queens tap. My family worked for Pepsi and my grandfather used to brag about how much they prided themselves on their purification process (they were purifying water for use with their other products well before the days of bottled water). I would be apt to believe that Coca Cola, bottlers of Dasani, have the same sort of system in place.
Thanks for the clarification! :thumbsup:

[Tinkerfreak]

We drink our tap water because we have a well and the water is great tasting. We have the water tested on a regular basis and it is great. In fact my kids prefer the tap water over the filtered water from the fridge.
My friend works for Poland Spring and she is in charge of testing the water. Yes it does come from a well or spring but it is purified and tested for quality. The thing I prefer about the Poland Spring water over the Dasani is that they do not add any sodium.
We usually fill the Naglene bottles also but occasionaly we buy bottled if we are out and need water or at a sporting event.

[Ian]

I guess the only thing that confuses me is why people would pay for something that thay can get for free?You may get yours for free since it comes from a well, but we pay for ours since it comes from the township.

It's like $90 a quarter or so and that's with us drinking bottled.


Then I read an article in Reader's Digest that most bottled water is no safer than tap. In fact, it's usually just bottled tap water from elsewhere, so other than portability, it makes no sense to purchase it if you have decent tap water.That's not entirely true ... it's true that some bottled water is filtered tap water, but I don't believe (although I could be wrong) that there are many brands out there that are nothing more than plain old tap water.

Besides, if you read the labels you know which ones to buy so you don't get cheated.

[DisneyLandMomma]

We drink water from our tap or fridge now because we have a well and our water is REALLY GOOD. I have lived someplace before where you HAD to buy bottled water(either individual or big jugs) because the water was sooo terrible. YUCK! I gag just thinking about it.

[DisneyTwinsMommy]

We drink only bottled water, and we recycle the bottles... i'm ok with that... :thumbsup:

[Jeff G]

It's like $90 a quarter or so and that's with us drinking bottled.



Just an interesting fact I read online. For the same price of one bottle of Evian you can get 1000 gallons of tap water.

[dlpmikki]

I think it all depends on how good your tap water is. Generally in the UK the tap water is drinkable although it tastes better in some parts of the country to others.

People do drink bottled water but not as much as in the US. Dasani may be partially responsible for that as they did launch in the UK and planned to launch all over Europe. However it all went badly wrong in 2004 when they were selling water that was plain unhealthy (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3566233.stm)

The governement are talking about adding flouride to the tap water here and if they do my filter will come back into action but until then the tap water is fine.

[magicofdisney]

We were doing the bottled water thing, but it got expensive. Plus, my recycling container was overflowing with the bottles. Ours never made it to the landfill....(jk)

Then I read an article in Reader's Digest that most bottled water is no safer than tap. In fact, it's usually just bottled tap water from elsewhere, so other than portability, it makes no sense to purchase it if you have decent tap water.
:thumbsup: I read that same article and that's why we're starting to switch to stainless steel canteens and drinking from our tap. The Kleen Kanteens look super cool but they're kind of expensive.

[Magic Smiles]

Further to my first post, while in WDW we drink bottled water. The water there is AWFUL!

[Sean Riley Taylor's Mom]

Bottled water for us. At home, in the car, on vacation and in the kids school, most importantly.

The school has sent a letter home every other month for the past two school years telling the parents that yet again there would be water coolers brought in. The bacteria levels in the water fountains, etc, were too high for drinking. Why they don't just keep the water coolers all the time is beyond me?!

Thankfully, we have always sent in a bottle of water with them in the morning and another in their lunch box for the afternoon. So, they know not to drink from the water fountains on the rare occasion they are actually open. :sick:

Our house is less then a mile from the school, we have never been too comfortable with the water in this area. So, it has been bottled water for us since we built the house six years ago.

[Ruprect]

Further to my first post, while in WDW we drink bottled water. The water there is AWFUL!

We're so frugal we drink the water fountain water at WDW. I just can't bring myself to pay more for water than I do for gasoline. You get used to the taste after a day or two.

It seems that we are lucky to live in a city with great source of water and good water system. If our water didn't taste good or was deemed to have high levels of bacteria or something I would be on bottled water oh so quickly.

[Dakota Rose]

Ditto for us! Bottled water is just too expensive for my frugal living ways and I really don't think it tastes any better. Especially since I try to drink 8 cups a day.

That's us too.

The first time I bought bottled water was in 1994 when I went to Europe the first time. Our chaperone insisted we drag bottled water around with us. But, by the time we got to Paris on day 5, I was refilling my bottle with the hotel tap water. I guess I was cheap even then!

[dolphinmickey9170]

We drink bottled water all the time. We live in Baltimore County, but our water comes from Baltimore City and it tastes funny. So, we bought a water cooler and buy the 5 gallon bottles for it plus cases of 16oz bottles too.

Years ago, only the snootie people in my area drank bottled water. The rest of us regular folks just drank tap water.

[2Epcot]

Americans do drink a lot of bottle water, which is kind of odd in that often when you travel to certain countries you are told to avoid the water. Yet here, we have some of the best water in the country (in most places) yet we get bottle water. Our home is the same, we drink bottle water both in home, and carry bottles in the cars, but we cook with tap water. I prefer the taste of the bottle water, though I do know depending on which bottle water you buy, you are just buying filtered tap anyway.