Do you drink bottled drinking water? If you do you’re not alone. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), more than half of all Americans buy bottled drinking water, to the tune of $4 billion yearly. Those majestic snow capped mountains and glaciers lead us to believe that bottled water is pure and safer to drink than tap water, but this may not always the case as presented on NRDC’s website at www.nrdc.org. Another reputable source on bottled drinking water is the World Health Organization, and you can visit this site at www.who.int for more information from another point of view. Not all bottled drinking water is under scrutiny, but not all is safe and pure either. You may just be buying tap water that has been bottled and then sold at up to 10,000 times the cost of what you pay for your own tap water. In fact, there are very few strict regulations on bottled drinking water. If you live near a bottled drinking water plant, drive there and go inside. Ask for a plant tour. Do you see any springs? Probably not! What you will see is a modern bottling plant with water coming out of the same pipe that provides drinking water to your home!
Why do consumers spend so much on bottled drinking water you ask? Some city tap water is less than desirable; it smells bad and tastes funky. That would be enough for me right there. But there are other reasons why people choose to buy bottled drinking water. It’s convenient too. Not everyone feels like carrying around a Nalgene bottle everyday. It’s just one more thing to keep track of throughout the day. Bottled drinking water is always an option to soda or other caloric beverages, and probably better for you even if some of it is just tap water. There has been much discussion the past few years about the contaminants present in public water supplies, which is why companies that package bottled drinking water are doing so well. Bottled drinking water just has the image of being safer and purer than what comes out of our tap. In all reality, we just shouldn’t have to choose bottled drinking water over tap water, even if it is trendier.
When camping, bottled drinking water is always a must for our family. Even though most campgrounds offer some type of water hookup, I usually don’t trust them for drinking or cooking. Do you know where that water coming from the spigot is coming from? At least the water in bottled drinking water has a source on the label. So we usually pack about one gallon of bottled drinking water per day per person while camping. We use it for drinking, cooking, brushing teeth, etc. We use the campground hookup water for washing pots and pans, showering, and the toilet.
Before you start making regular expenditures for bottled drinking water you may want to check out the brand you care considering consuming great quantities of. Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water for instance, has a very customer friendly website at www.arrowheadwater.com where you can find answers to most if not all of your questions about this popular brand of bottled drinking water. Just check out the label of the next bottle of water you pick up to see if they have a website and just what type of information they provide to consumers. If they don’t provide what you want to know, then I’d be checking out another brand, or just sticking with the tap water. It’s cheaper.
