7 Shocking Things You Never Knew about Bottled Water

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Bottled water is healthy! Or so some people would want us to believe. Seriously, those pictures on the bottles, the ones showing beautiful mountain streams, or waterfalls, are not reality. They are simply pictures or drawings designed to entice your mind into thinking that what is depicted on the label is exactly what is inside. Bottled water is nothing more than water. It’s big business, too. If it wasn’t, why are there all those different brands of water for sale? No one would spend money bottling and shipping water if it didn’t make them a generous profit. You should know, however, that bottled water is wasteful, not more healthy than regular old water from your kitchen sink, and distracts from the true needs of good health. Here are 7 good reasons you should stop buying bottled water.

1. Plastic bottles are not ecological

Most likely you have heard through mainstream media that it’s ok to drink from plastic bottles since they are recyclable. They are not being honest with you. First, plastic bottles are not biodegradable, not in any meaningful way. They will be around for thousands of years, even if we stopped producing them today.

What most people don’t know, or don’t think about, it what it takes to produce one of those water bottles. Vast quantities of fossil fuels, and water, are used to manufacture, fill, and then ship those bottles around the world. You don’t believe that’s true? Have you looked at the water bottles sold in the 99 cent stores? Most are from China or Thailand. Think of the fossil fuels, gas, oil, etc., that it took just to ship those bottles here? Why are we doing that anyway? Is the United States fresh out of plastic bottles and water? Read more what’s in your water.

2. Bottled water is not cheap

That pretty picture of a mountain stream on that bottle in your hand does not mean this is where your water came from. A few brands do come from some underground water source, but most bottled water is nothing more than slightly filtered municipal water.

Some companies try to dress it up by filtering or radiating the water with ultraviolet light before selling it to you at thousands times the actual cost of that water. For example, a 20 ounce bottle of water costs about one dollar. That is 5 cents an ounce. That sounds really inexpensive until you consider that tap water, which is what bottled water is more or less, is approximately 5 cents a gallon! Also, studies have proved that bottled water can contain mold, benzene, even arsenic. In short, the mark up on bottled water is extreme and their health standards are iffy at best.

3. Plastic bottled water means an incredible amount of trash

About 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year! It’s almost inconvieveable. Even with the best recycling efforts, only about 20 per cent of plastic water bottles make it to a recycling plant, with about 80 per cent of plastic water bottles going to a land fill. Now that’s IF they make it to the trash can at all.

There is so much plastic waste that gigantic pools of plastic trash are virtual floating islands in the world’s oceans. This is a great threat to birds and fish, who get caught in it and drown or get poisoned by it after ingesting it because they thought it was food.

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4. Bottled water means less clean and less efficient municipal water

If you ask people why they drink bottled water many will respond that they either believe that their local water isn’t healthy or they are turned off by the taste, sometimes even the look, of tap water. If this is true, that the local water source has a problem, it makes much more sense to fix the source of the “bad” tap water than turn away and find another source.

Most people won’t vote for a bond to fix their municipal water, when they are thinking, Why, I only drink bottled water anyway?

5. Bottled water is corporate water

Bottled water is so profitable, everyone wants in on it. With clean, fresh water more difficult to find, and with urbanization in popular areas with little or altered natural water sources, Los Angeles, for example, water is becoming big business.

This is why you see multinational corporations getting into the bottled water game and buying a lot of ground water or the distribution rights to it. You should be concerned that corporations are buying the right to sell to you what use to be a basic commodity; clean, ample water.

6. Bottled water tastes better, right?

The fact of the matter is, when conducting blind taste tests, almost no one could detect the difference between bottled water and plain old tap water. The New York Times and Cleveland’s local news channel, among many others, have held “Think outside the Bottle” campaigns with taste tests to see if people could tell the difference. They tested not only their local water, but also offered different brands of water, to see if one brand won out over the other. People were also asked which was the best tasting water. Tap water was almost always the winner.

In one study conducted by Showtime television, 75 per cent of New York City residents in a blind taste test chose their local tap water over bottled water.

7. Bottled water contains toxins, even if they do not have BPA

Plastic is not good for planet earth and it’s not good for you, either! Recent studies have shown that the concentration of chemicals that are currently used in plastic water bottles can leach out into the water over time. It’s true that bottled water companies no longer use BPA in their bottles but the plastic they do use is laced with other chemicals, such as antimony. Find out also about other harmful drinks.

Antimony is metallic in nature and can be fatal in large doses. In smaller doses it has been shown to cause dizziness, nausea, and depression. There have been no long term studies done to show the damage that might be caused from the chemicals that leach out of the plastic and into the water but think for a minute. Do you want to find out 20 years from now that all that bottled water you have been drinking has slowly been poisoning you?

Break the bottled water habit. Choose a re-usable water bottle (BPA free, or, even better, stainless steel) in whatever size or design you like and use it. If you are concerned that your municipal water is unsafe or if it tastes bad to you, buy a home filtration system that uses inexpensive carbon filters or coconut shells and make your own clean, safe, fresh tasting water for next to nothing. You may even alkalize water at home. Good for the planet and good for you!

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