Bottled water is 3,500 times worse for the environment than tap water

I got blind sided by an argument when visiting a friend recently because I carry a reusable water bottle with me whenever I leave home for more than a few hours whereas he brings throwaway water bottles. At one point he gestures to my bottled water and asked &quot;does that make you feel good about yourself ?&quot; implying I am virtue signaling.<p>I explained that I saw a documentary ~10 years ago where the claim was if you can do one thing for the environment, please stop purchasing bottled water. It seemed like an easy request, so why not.<p>I then rhetorically asked him if he &quot;felt good&quot; about himself because he doesn&#x27;t just throw his trash out the car window, which is what we city kids (and adults) used to do in the early 80s. &quot;No you don&#x27;t do it and you don&#x27;t think about it, right ? It&#x27;s the same with my water bottle. I don&#x27;t lecture anyone, and I honestly didn&#x27;t think once about what he or others are doing.&quot;<p>Culture changes many times for the better. It&#x27;s odd though how some people are the last to get the memo despite similar demographics.

Boy, talk about timing.<p>I just used up about 16 liters of bottled water in about 4 days because we started to doubt that our tap water got us all(family) sick at the same time. When I tried to test the water, I found no easy way to do so; all test kits on Amazon turns up with comically bad reviews. Local water testing lab only tests for specific pollutants with legal precedence like Lead, Cadmium, Mercury etc. There was not a single trustworthy test I could find to say here is a decent test profile we ran on your sample, and here is the water quality score.<p>Context: I moved 2 weeks ago to Amsterdam, NL from Denmark where we had been drinking tap water without any thought and trouble.<p>A scientifically dumb test to get off tap water while we were all sick(sore throat, bad stomach, and mild fever - yes, COVID negative) worked and we are not sick now. I don’t know whether to stop using bottled water and go back to tap water or to continue this environmentally bad choice of bottled water in fear of health.<p>I used to believe that tap water is a good natural choice as it packs minerals and useful natural solubles that would have been filtered out in bottled water. But, if it could get me sick, I don’t know what to do.<p>Hopefully we don’t get the same sickness again now that we are drinking tap water, and I could build up my trust again on tap water.

One note that these articles and comparisons miss almost every single time - including the linked article. Bottled water is better for your health vs. the alternatives it sits next to in-store - sugar filled drinks, soda and&#x2F;or diet soda - all of which are just as bad for the environment or worse.<p>When that health comparison is made, it becomes difficult to understand how banning or restricting bottled water makes sense when the alternative is not really tap water.

Maybe 60 million Americans avoid tap water because they have reasons not to trust their own water, especially post-Flint. [1]<p>Some quick Googling turns these pages up:<p>- Consumer Reports founds PFAS in 117 of the 120 water samples they tested from across the US [2]<p>- When [chlorine] mixes with other organic compounds it can create a few harmful byproducts, including trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids [3]<p>- Lead poisoning is apparently also a problem in Detroit, Pittsburgh, DC [4]<p>- Arsenic has seeped into the water supply in California, Arizona, and New Mexico [4]<p>I honestly don&#x27;t know if any of these are incorrect misinformation or if people are acting in a misguided fashion, but as far as I can see, there certainly doesn&#x27;t seem to be a consensus on that being the case.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theconversation.com&#x2F;nearly-60-million-americans-dont-drink-their-tap-water-research-suggests-heres-why-thats-a-public-health-problem-158483" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theconversation.com&#x2F;nearly-60-million-americans-dont...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.consumerreports.org&#x2F;water-quality&#x2F;how-safe-is-our-drinking-water-a0101771201&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.consumerreports.org&#x2F;water-quality&#x2F;how-safe-is-ou...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;signs-tap-water-contaminated-unsafe-2019-5" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;signs-tap-water-contaminated...</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;toxic-chemicals-tap-drinking-water-2019-4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;toxic-chemicals-tap-drinking...</a>

If you want to make people stop using water bottles you have to improve the water going to their house.<p>I&#x27;ve been to very few places (in the US) that the water tasted good from the tap. One was a major metro, the others were places with well water.<p>My parents live in a medium sized Texas city that has tap water that is typically brown, sometimes it comes out of the tap foamy. Some filter it, but many just buy bottled.<p>I use a simple filter at home to improve taste. However, after living in hurricane and tornado prone areas, I keep a small supply of water on hand (a few cases of bottled) for emergencies.

I live in a hundred-year-old apartment building that is not the best maintained. I have no idea about the condition of the pipes and I don’t know where my water is coming from. I can get a filter, but I feel like it’s similar to running my own email server. Sure, I could do it, but I’d rather put the burden of filtering (and quality control in general) on a 3rd party.<p>Hence I buy bottled water.

Title should be updated to &quot;Bottled water is 1400–3500...&quot; based off &quot;Highlights&quot; section of the actual study that cosmotic linked to. I&#x27;ve learned firsthand that it&#x27;s counterproductive to only quote the high-end of the range. Comes off as disingenuous.

Actual study: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S0048969721039565" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S004896972...</a>

I don’t understand why people don’t just buy water filters.

FWIW, bottled water is also ~1000 times more expensive than tap water.<p>I find that the energy needed to produce any particular product tends to correlate pretty strongly (though not perfectly) with its price, so the headline is hardly surprising.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.walmart.com&#x2F;ip&#x2F;Great-Value-Purified-Drinking-Water-16-9-Fl-Oz-40-Count&#x2F;992524020" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.walmart.com&#x2F;ip&#x2F;Great-Value-Purified-Drinking-Wat...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.move.org&#x2F;utility-bills-101&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.move.org&#x2F;utility-bills-101&#x2F;</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wolframalpha.com&#x2F;input&#x2F;?i=%28%243.98+%2F+%2840*16.9+fl+oz+%29%29+%2F+%28%2470.93+%2F+%28365%2F12+*+3000+Gallons%29%29" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wolframalpha.com&#x2F;input&#x2F;?i=%28%243.98+%2F+%2840*1...</a>

Considering the devastation invoked when filling up newly minted plastic vessels with rich, inland aquifers, believe this factor is not 3500 but actually much higher.<p>&gt;They used something called a “life cycle assessment” which estimates the environmental impact of an item over its entire lifespan. That includes the extraction of raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, distribution, use and disposal.<p>Would like to point out that extraction does get more costly over time. Think of oil wells or any other resource, the low-hanging, easy-to-grab fruits are taken first, then the tech to extract must be advanced, then more precarious pursuits in search of resource are undertaken and the ecological devastation is quite a bit more each successive time.

Yes, but people still buy it (and market is bound to grow, ceteris paribus) because they think tap water is worse somehow. And with crumbling public water infrastructure in many countries, that&#x27;s not really far from the truth.

I personally buy and drink bottled water for two reasons: 1. It tastes better as I enjoy highly mineralized water 2. It satiates thirst better.<p>Water I usually buy has 100ppm magnesium ions, 340ppm calcium ions and 14ppm potassium ions and it actually tastes good in comparison to tap water. I would buy it in 20L bulk reusable bottles if it was available but it isn&#x27;t.

I drink bottled water because if I did not the next choice would be stuffing myself with soft drinks and other crap. I can only drink so much coffee and tea per day.<p>Tap water just doesn&#x27;t taste well on its own.<p>I would be first to switch to drinking tap water if I could somehow make it taste well.

bottled water sucks ass, but how do you quantify this sort of thing? it&#x27;s almost a meaningless number. after 3500 liters dispensed from a tap, is there one empty plastic bottle dumped in a landfill? or are you supposed to reuse a water bottle 3500 times before tossing it? are there 3500 times more co2 emissions from getting bottled water to my lips? last i checked there isn&#x27;t much carbon involved in pulling from the ground, which isnt even how everyone gets their water. no i didnt read the article.

For perspective water bottles consume five hundreths of 1% (0.05%) of the annual US petroleum consumption. Worry about things that actually matter.

Are they taking into account the carbon footprint of the enormous yachts the Nestlé executives buy and operate with the profits from water sales in their analysis?<p>What about the pipe fitters union lobbying to require lead pipes decades after universal acceptance of the dangers of lead and the enormous cost to replace?

Just reading the headline:<p>How bad is tap water for the environment? AFAIK, not bad at all.<p>And 3,500 times 0 is 0.

I never carry a water bottle and im never hydrated.

You get roughly the same number if you compare the cost of tap water and bottled water per gallon. Monetary cost is a pretty good rule-of-thumb when estimating environmental impact.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slate.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;2013&#x2F;07&#x2F;cost-of-bottled-water-vs-tap-water-the-difference-will-shock-you.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slate.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;2013&#x2F;07&#x2F;cost-of-bottled-water-vs-...</a>

Suppose that for some reason tap water was actually completely neutral for the environment. It produced zero change in either direction.<p>They could have headlines reading &quot;bottled water is over 3000 million billion trillion googol times worse for the environment than tap water&quot;.<p>They could then follow up with the same statement about cars, straws, recyclable straws, spinach, or anything with any non-zero effect at all.<p>&quot;How many times worse&quot; is a nonsense comparison meant for sensationalism.

This bizarre thing is from a health perspective bottled water is <i>toxic</i> for you.<p>Plastic, especially new plastic, actually leaches compounds into water. As plastic gets old, its leaching capacity goes down. Old plastic is safer than newer plastic. However, most plastic bottles, including BPA-free are estrogenic. They are bad for men and women causing a variety of problems which are still poorly understood.<p>The worse use-case is plastic filled bottles, like water, that have sat or have been transported in hot environments which is to say all of them. Ditto for hot takeout food served in plastic containers - soups, curries, etc.<p>People who buy bottled water are literally paying money to get poisoned for a teeny bit of convenience. I know most water fountains are not cleaned properly but that water is safer (by orders of magnitudes, but I have no data to cite) than bottled water.<p>A lot of this is problematic for the evidence driven folks. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence but please use the precautionary principle.