Bottled Water Faces Rising Tide of Criticism

[CheezeFlixz]

I said it a year ago here that bottled water was causing more waste than originally thought and was a racket.

So now ... http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,389362,00.html

Now here's the thing when I was a kid (a million years ago), cokes/soda/pop came in glass bottles, you paid a 3 cent deposit for those glass bottles and returned them to the store for a refund, you didn't have this landfill problem with plastic bottles. The metal caps on the glass bottle was lined with cork, 100% renewable, under the cork on some bottles you had a chance at winning big money! Like 5 or 10 cents, sometimes a quarter or half dollar and or rare occasions you'd win a dollar.

So if people want to waste money on bottled water, do it.  But why not sell it in returnable glass bottles? People are more likely to return glass bottles to the store for money than to recycle plastic bottled for nothing and have to pay money for gas to drive them to a recycling center. Sure it'll cost more to ship, but back in the day they had regional bottling companies and most soda's were produced locally, saving on shipping and producing jobs and product loyalty.

Where I live people drink SunDrop by the gallons, why? Because years ago there was a bottling plant here and supported many families, those folks still drink it today, as do there kids and their kids etc.

I say bring the glass bottle back! Made from sand! Plastic ... hmmm made from that evil oil. 

[Patient7]

I don't know about everyone else, but where I live we have what's called a glass and there's a magical water making device called a sink you never have to throw anything away!  Amazing!  We need to distribute these things to every homeowner in the world!  But how?

[Torgo]

I used to drink bottles water but I've switched a few months ago to just drinking out of the tap again.    Don't know why actually I started to buy bottled water to begin with...............

[CheezeFlixz]

I used to drink bottles water but I've switched a few months ago to just drinking out of the tap again.    Don't know why actually I started to buy bottled water to begin with...............

You were brain washed in bottled water ....

My wife use to buy it and I was like WHY? WHY? WHY? We have filtered spring water at our tap, she's finally stopped too, I think mainly to stop having to hear me gripe about it.

[ulthar]

My wife drinks a fair bit of bottled water.  FWIW, we DO reuse a lot (not all) of the bottles before taking them to the recycle bin.  I guess the vending machines/cafeteria at her work only offers soft drinks and bottled water, so she gets the water.

We use bottled water on trips.  She buys a flat, and that's what we drink.  We often put those little drink powder singles into them.

For around the house, she says she doesn't like the taste of our tap water.  I drink it all the time and don't mind it.  But, we DO have a filter.  It's not inline; you have to fill it up.  So, she drinks the filtered tap water.

We drink virtually no soft drinks - probably less than 10 2L bottles a year.

[AndyC]

I've imagined the Evian bottling plant as some fat, balding guy in a dirty undershirt filling bottles with a garden hose.

Seriously, the more expensive the water, the worse it seems to taste. And it's always the ones that emphasize their purity that have the foulest taste. How can something be filtered five or six times and taste like it came straight out of a pond?

Nothing wrong with our tapwater here. We're on an artesian well that has some really delicious water, and it's always nice and cold.

[CheezeFlixz]

And it's always the ones that emphasize their purity that have the foulest taste. How can something be filtered five or six times and taste like it came straight out of a pond?

It's what they don't tell you, what did they filter it through? Old socks? Soiled underwear? Sweaty t-shirt? Septic tank? Old gym bag?

[akiratubo]

I've never been a fan of bottled water.  I could see ot if homes in the United States had trouble getting clean water from the tap but we're not at that point yet.

[Trevor]

And it's always the ones that emphasize their purity that have the foulest taste. How can something be filtered five or six times and taste like it came straight out of a pond?

It's what they don't tell you, what did they filter it through? Old socks? Soiled underwear? Sweaty t-shirt? Septic tank? Old gym bag?

  but definitely also 

Or perhaps Trevor's famous underpants? No, nooooooooo! 

[Trevor]

This story also started in South Africa last year: the mineral water companies were accused of ripping off their customers not only by the prices but also by the claim that their water was bottled at a mountain spring. Most of the complainants stated that the water was more likely bottled at a tap / faucet somewhere in Johannesburg, so now all bottles carry the label "Prepared Water". 

I'm actually as much a fan of mineral water as Captain Haddock is, so I drink my water out of the tap. 

[Ash]

I've imagined the Evian bottling plant as some fat, balding guy in a dirty undershirt filling bottles with a garden hose.

[asimpson2006]

I use bottled water mostly at my job since I don't feel like to keep refilling a Styrofoam cup every time I need water.  We get cheaper water more or less for when we go on trips or go some where and we want to drink water while getting there.  I use our tap water now since we have a filtering system put in a few years ago, but it just to mainly fill up my empty bottle of water.  I used to get water out our water cooler but the cold button stopped working and now it's just hot and tepid, and I can't stand tepid water.

[AndyC]

Bill does fit the bill all right. I was kind of visualizing Paulie from the Rocky movies.

[Mr. DS]

The wife buys a ridiculous amount of bottled water.  I drink it out of the tap mostly.  We claim the bottle deposits on our soda cans (along with our neighbors), unfortunately there aren't too many places that have a deposit return on bottled water.  Perhaps that would inspire people to go down and claim their nickle which does add up after awhile.  You're right Andy C about water tasting worse as the price goes up. Evian to me is pure liquid sh*t.  Give me water out of the garden hose any day.

[indianasmith]

I do have one, tiny, itty-bitty little question.


Since plastic has only been around for about 60 years, how do they KNOW that it takes 1,000 years to decompose?  Do they have a time machine?  And if they do, why can't they use it for useful stuff instead of going into the future to see if all the plastic has rotted yet?