Bottled water: we pay a high price for it in more ways than one

It's expensive, bad for the environment, and, believe it or not, might not be good for you

When I was a kid, people would have laughed if you said you had bought a bottle of water. Coke and Pepsi came in bottles, Dr. Pepper and a few other carbonated, sugary drinks as well. But water? Plain old water? In a bottle? Water just flows out of the tap, so cheap it’s almost free. Make some soup with it. Take a bath with it. Drink as much as you like. Folks would have thought it absurd to buy water in bottles.

Then somebody came up with the idea of doing just that, putting water in a bottle as they had with soft drinks. The next thing you know, folks started buying their water in bottles. And they liked it! Sales increased over the decades, and by 2016, bottled water became the largest selling packaged beverage in the United States. According to the International Bottled Water Association, in 2019, bottled water companies produced 14.3 billion gallons of bottled water, with the average American drinking 43 gallons a year.

When you ask folks why they buy and drink bottled water, they will say that it’s safer than tap water. People I work with tell me they won’t drink the water that comes out of our taps because it probably has microorganisms in it. Yuck! But back in 2005, some scientists conducted a simple experiment. They stored bottled water and tap water under different conditions: some at room temperature, some refrigerated, and some warmed to 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (mimicking bottled water sitting in the sun).

Over the next 48 hours, bacteria in the warmed bottled water skyrocketed, from fewer than 1 colony per millimeter to 38,000 colonies per milliliter. Bacterial growth in tap water at all three temperatures was minimal.

What we are likely witnessing here is the effect of residual chlorine. Most municipal tap water is treated with chlorine to kill microorganisms. Once that water leaves the treatment facility, it retains a small amount of chlorine, which continues to kill any microorganisms that the water may encounter along the way to the tap

Some of the packaging can be pretty snazzy, but in the long run, bottled water is just water, and may not be as good as what comes out of your tap. Photo: Thrillist thrillist.com

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I took a class on drinking water as part of my master’s program. One of the details I learned was that, except for distilled water, all water has something else—minerals, organic material, disinfectant byproducts (more on these later), microorganisms, and a few other things—besides plain old H2O. For San Diego, where I live, our municipal report on our drinking water reminds us that we even have uranium in our drinking water.

Another thing we learned and one thing I like to tell people is that all the goodness in bottled water can probably be associated with the water from your taps. The FDA sets the standards for bottled water, and the EPA sets the standards for tap water. In general, the EPA’s standards are higher than the FDA’s. Yes, you heard that right. The standards for tap water are higher than for bottled water.

In some respects the standards for bottled water are higher. Because so many municipalities still rely on lead pipes, the EPA allows for more lead in drinking water: 15 parts per billion (ppb) to the FDA’s 5 ppb.

Although the ads and images on the bottles of water you bought by the case at Costco may suggest the water was sourced from springs or mountain streams, most of the time companies just turn on the tap. They may filter the tap water or treat it with ozone, which kills microorganisms, but for the most part, that attractively packaged bottle of water is essentially the same as what comes from your faucet.

By buying bottled water, you’re really blowing your money. A bottle of water, bought at a convenience store, costs about $1.50. At 16 ounces per bottle, that would be $12.00 for a gallon. Tap water costs on average $0.02 a gallon. The bottled water is thus 60 times more expensive that the water that comes out of your faucet. Think of it this way, a burger at a diner might cost $12.00. Would you pay $720.00 for another burger that is essentially the same?

Then there is all that plastic. Plastic is made from oil, a fossil fuel, and it takes 17 million barrels of oil to meet the annual U.S. demand for bottled water. A whopping 86 percent of those bottles are not recycled but wind up in landfill or, worse, in lakes, grasslands, estuaries, and other open spaces.

If I’ve convinced you that bottled water is an unnecessary expense, wasteful, and a bad way to use plastic, but you still want the added safety you think you might be getting from bottled water, buy a filter. That’s what my wife and I use at home. For years we attached one to the faucet, but my sister gave us a nice Christmas present and now we fill up a one-gallon pitcher as needed and let a carbon filter do its job. For the folks who say that they just don’t like the taste of tap water (I have to admit that there are some places that don’t have very good tasting tap water.) filtering the water usually improves the taste.

Although tap water is good and safe to drink, there are disinfectant byproducts (DBPs) left over from the interaction between organic matter and chlorine. These byproducts can, over decades, cause cancer. A home filter is the best way to remove those DBPs. Did I just make an argument for using bottled water? Not really. As I said above, most bottled water is tap water. Although that expensive water comes in a nice bottle, it may still contain DBPs. You’re better off filtering your tap water at home.For more environmental science & news follow me on Twitter @EcoScripsit.