Comparing Bottled Water and Tap Water

Do you ever think bottled water is safer than tap water? You would be wrong. According to "Bottled Water: The Wrong Choice paragraph 4", it states that the city tap water companies must follow safe strict rules to make sure nothing in the water harms us. The bottles water

Seventy percent of the human body is comprised of water. This makes drinking water quality vital. The EPA estimates the average adult consumes 1.2 liters daily or 115 gallons of community (tap) water daily while the average consumption of bottled water per capita in the U.S. is in excess of 30.8 gallons per year and is expected to continue to increase according to the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) and the Beverage Marketing Association’s 2013 report. Bottled water costs anywhere from 240 to 10,000 times more per gallon than the average cost of tap, but people’s perception that bottled water is purer, safer or healthier is driven, in part, by strong bottled water marketing campaigns that focus on news reports about crises that involve municipal water supplies. (NRDC, “Bottled Water Pure Drink or Pure Hype”) The sources for both tap and bottled waters as well as additives to either enrich or neutralize contents of water determine the mineral and chemical composition of drinking water. Is bottled water really any purer or healthier than local tap water?

In fact 22% of test water bottle brands had chemical contaminants higher than the state limit (ABC, 1). So why do Americans think bottled water is so great? Maybe it’s because of how much companies advertise the product, advertising expenses for bottled water totaled $61 million in 2012 ("International Bottled Water Association" 1). Whatever the reason may be, bottled water is the second most popular beverage in the U.S.A., and more and more bottles of water are being produced and distributed this very second.

Many of people have not realized that the creation of bottled water affects our environment. The production of water bottles requires a large amount of water plus the water that is needed to fill the bottle. Considering there is a shortage of water in several places, water should be better handled and not wasted on plastic bottle making. Of the eighty million single serve bottles of water consumed daily, thirty million ends up in landfills (Soechtig, 2009 qtd. in “Bottled Water: The Risks to Our Health, Our

In a qualitative study performed in the United Kingdom, “the majority of participants associated bottled water with having fewer impurities than tap water, and were more likely to trust the quality of bottled water than tap water” (Ward). Individuals with well water should also be attentive to the purity of their water supply, as it is not even held to regulation standard. Looking at the facts though, bottled water is regulated by Food and Drug Administration in equivalence to the Environmental Protection Agency who holds the public officials accountable for the standards of tap water (Hogan & Larsen). This is not to say, though, that there is not human error on both sides that can cause room for contamination of a drinking supply and jeopardize the safety of the

According to a four-year, detailed investigation to evaluate the quality and safety of bottled water conducted by an environmental advocacy group, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), traces of various chemicals (THMs such as chloroform and BDCM, both probable human carcinogens) and arsenic were discovered in high levels. Another chemical found in PET plastic bottles is antimony that is harmless in small doses but in larger doses can cause nausea, vomiting, and death. (Ban the Bottle, 2014) A senior scientist at the NRDC, Dr. Gina Solomon told The New York Times that “there is no reason to believe that bottled water is safer than tap water.” (Ban the Bottle, 2014) Public water in the U.S. is heavily regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because they require numerous tests for bacteria daily which are available to the public. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates bottled water and only require tests on a weekly basis and does not share their discoveries with neither the public nor EPA. (Ban the Bottle,

Most bottled waters come from factory, where the waters is treated, packaged into chemically produced bottles, and then sold to us. Millions of people are amazed to the fact that they’re drinking water combined with chemicals. Tap water and bottled water are essentially the same water. Despite in some areas tap water may be polluted depending on the area in which you live. Although you may think bottled water is more suitable for you to drink, you’re wrong.

Gleick supports this argument and cites specific grounds that disprove bottled water companies’ false claims. For example oxygenated water is said to “strengthen your immune system…and even brain function” despite scientific testing done proving that a single breath of air contains more oxygen than the product itself (Gleick 118). Next, the author recalls someone who drank nothing but super-hydrating Penta Water, which cost over sixty dollars a case. This costly expense was proven to be futile, because scientific evidence proved that Penta did not have any health benefits superior to those of ordinary water (Gleick 129). Barnett incorporates a qualifier which states that it is difficult to conclude whether bottled or tap water is healthier. However, this does not take away from the fact that the EPA, which regulates municipal water, is more strict than the FDA is with regulation over bottled water. Bottled water companies claim they intensely purify their products despite this evidence. These seemingly astonishing claims mislead consumers who do not possess the knowledge nor the equipment necessary to test the water themselves. Consumers spend money to purchase products that turn out to have no outstanding health benefits. They may additionally put their health at risk by consuming bottled water which may contain pollutants detrimental to the human body.

In 2004, Americans, on average, drank 24 gallons of bottled water, making it second only to carbonated soft drinks in popularity (Standage). In the article “Plastic Water Bottles Causing Flood or Harm to the Environment,” the Earth Policy Institute factors the energy used to pump, process, transport, and refrigerate bottled water as over 50 million barrels of oil every year (Schriever). It’s absurd that so many resources are used to make plastic bottles which are not necessary at all. Bottled water does allow us to drink water out of it but in reality bottled water is very bad for

The truth is that 25% of bottled water actually comes from public sources and is only sometimes decontaminated. According to an article titled Bottled Water vs. Tap Water, “For the consumer, bottled water is significantly more expensive than tap water.” This highlights the inconvenience of bottled water. First, you have to drive in your car and pollute the air with carbon monoxide from your car to get to the store. Furthermore, you have to buy a heavy package of water bottles that you would otherwise get for free from your kitchen sink.

The idea of having clean, dependable water in a convenient, disposable bottle has been often the appeal of the bottled water franchise. They boast anything from being mineral infused and pure to untouched and filtered at the source. It is even believed that because of these claims, bottled water taste better than tap. It is assumed so wholeheartedly, in fact, that America is actually one of the top bottled water consumers in the world with a whopping ninety-one liters per person ("Top Bottled Water Consuming Countries, 2004."). In Tom Sandage’s article, “Bad to the Last Drop,” the

According to Hannah Ellsbury (2013), “The energy squandered on using bottled water would be sufficient to power a hundred and ninety thousand homes”. In 1621, the idea of bottled water first originated in the United Kingdom. Therefore, global consumption of bottled water reached seventy-four and seven billion gallons in 2014. The largest consumer in the world of bottled water is U.S. comes next Mexico, China, and Brazil. Some individuals argue that drinking bottled water has many risks in different aspects. However, this paper argues that people should not only drink bottled water.

Since fossil fuel takes hundreds of millions of years to renew they are considered non renewables. In the process of making bottled water, it requires the use of , oil which is a nonrenewable. In 2006 more than 17 million barrels of oil were used in the process of making plastic water bottles, that number has risen since then. With only enough oil to last earth 53.3 years the use of oil in bottled water making is bad because of the mass production of it. When oil runs out the modern way of living will not be the same, it will be catastrophic when the world runs out of oil and bottled water contributes to the waist of it. Also only three percent of Earth’s water is fresh and some of it people can’t even get to. Therefore it is wasteful to use and manufacture bottled water because it requires three times the amount of water to make the bottle than to fill it.

Water is an essential part of our lives. It is arguably one of our most important necessities. But, the burning question of bottled vs. tapped still urges on today. There are many pros and cons to both scenarios such as environmental impact, price, cleanliness and people still want to know what is ultimately the best route to go. I personally prefer bottled over tap but, let's see what the facts have to say. In an article on Diffen it states “Bottled water has to meet less strict regulations than tap water. This means that it can contain bacterial or chemical contaminants, including carcinogens, that exceed industry standards.” This is extremely shocking because I rather drink bottled water over tap. And you would think that since bottled water

Have you ever had any concerns about bottled water? Do you think that bottled water consumption should be banned? Bottled water is water packed in plastic containers and sold for human consumption (Health Canada, 2013). Currently, the amount of bottled water consumed has increased considerably since many people feel it is safer drinking bottled water than tap water (Parent and Wrong, 2014). According to The Statistics Portal, the global sale of bottled water took a leap from 161, 589 to 181, 608 liters from 2009 to 2011. Only in the United States, each American citizen consumed around 32 gallons of bottled water in 2013, thus meaning an equivalent growth of 15, 94% over 2009 (The Statistics Portal, 2014). In fact, due to good portability, bottled water has been helpful in both simple and complex situations such as daily exercises and natural disasters. Even though having those few considerable advantages, bottled water still have been less beneficial; especially due to the negative impacts in the socio-economic, health and environmental fields.