Buyer, beware
Crystal clear water pouring from a blue-tinted bottle with a shiny label. Bottled water appears to be the very essence of a healthy-living choice, and there's now almost as much selection of water brands as there is for soda.
But stop and think about this: Doesn't it seem that we all fell for a fad?
In recent news, PepsiCo is getting its hand slapped. It seems that what it's marketing in those nice bottles with attractive labeling is nothing more than tap water.
If you think about it, it's good work if you can get it. When the whole concept of selling bottled water was first introduced, someone probably got laughed right out of the boardroom. However, like a lot of ideas that inexplicably strike a nerve and take off, this particular idea has made a lot of companies a pretty penny. One estimate by the beverage industry estimates consumers spent $15 billion for bottled water just last year alone.
That's an incredible amount of money, especially if they're getting nothing more than bottles filled up in a sink.
Granted, the companies are putting the water through a purification process when they get it from the public reservoirs. It's not like the bottling manager of the beverage company is standing over his kitchen sink and filling up a tractor-trailer load of bottles. (Or so I hope.)
The real concern for many jurisdictions is the environmental impact of this industry—with landfills run amok with plastic bottles and with the enormous energy that goes into making and shipping all of those bottles.
You may drink bottled water either for convenience or because you're not confident in the cleanliness of what's coming out of your tap. I read a story some years ago about a couple of sisters who lived past the century mark. In addition to living a healthy lifestyle that included daily stretching, exercise, and prayer, they boiled every drop of water that they drank. They attributed their longevity to this and to the rest of their health regimen.
So if you'd like to opt out of the bottled-water profit machine but don't want to give up convenience or safety, you can boil your tap water and let it cool. Better yet, invest in a water filter. Aquasana, Culligan, Kenmore and GE all make high quality products under $200 that are widely available. Amwa (www.amway.com), or Quixtar, and Aqua-pure make pricier models that run from $350 to $500. There are also inexpensive pitchers from Pur and Brita that are clearly better than nothing and will at least improve the taste. However, they don't have near the overall filtering power of the others, which remove cysts and a variety of other harmful chemical compounds found in some water supplies.
Because of filter size and replacement needs, the Amway filter is actually the lowest cost per gallon—under 10 cents—while the Brita costs as much as 25 cents per gallon. There are other quality products on the market and you can spend as much as $2000 for an under-the-sink or whole-house system. I happen to use an Amway filter, but based on the data, the others appear to be excellent choices, too.
Fill up a reusable bottle or a canteen and keep the rest in a pitcher in your refrigerator. . Skip the plastic, period. Most of them can leech dangerous chemicals known as endocrine disruptors into the water. Reusing store-bought bottled water bottles also puts you at risk for illness from bacterial contamination, as they are impossible to truly keep clean once opened and used. Stick with reusable glass—nothing like a good old Mason jar—or lightweight stainless steel. I use a lightweight stainless steel unbreakable thermos made by THERMOS that works great and keeps my water cool for hours.
You'll be doing your pocketbook a favor—and keeping the landfills cleared of a little extra plastic.
