Bottled Water or Tap Water?

Do you drink water from the tap or do you go out and buy bottled water?

It is argued that bottled water is purer and therefore healthier for us than tap water, but around 25% of bottled water is just glorified tap water, taken directly from local water supplies. Sometimes it's treated and sometimes it's not. It's then bottled and sold to us at an outrageously increased price. A litre of water out of the tap costs less than 1p, yet you could pay as much as £2 for a litre of bottled water. You do the maths.

In the UK, tap water undergoes many processes to bring it up to the standards set out by the UK Water Supply Regulators. It is equally as good as most bottled waters and very often fresher. Don't forget, bottled water could stay in its bottle on a shop shelf for as long as two years before it reaches its ‘sell by’ date. Wouldn't you rather drink it fresh out of the tap?

I get why people might buy bottled water in a pub or restaurant. If you're driving and don't want a juice or fizzy drink, or just don't drink alcohol, then water is a great alternative and yes, you''ll be paying a shocking price for it, but then you'd be paying a shocking price for a juice or beer too. Let's face it, if you buy a bottle of beer in a supermarket, you'll pay a fraction of the price that you'd pay for the same drink in a pub, but that's how it is. You're paying for being on the premises and spending time with friends or colleagues away from work or home. So, paying for a bottle of water in a pub, I'm cool with. These days you can get all sorts of different waters in bottles but I remember when, if you asked for a water you would only get Perrier ("nothing else will do") Is that stuff still around?

Perhaps you buy bottled water to reduce limescale in your kettle? I'm all for that, but there are cheaper ways of doing it, like using a water filter instead. Filtered water is a great alternative to bottled water. It is designed to work with tap water so no extra energy is required to filter the water. This bypasses some of the environmental problems of the bottled water industry, such as the production of the plastic bottles, -approximately only a third of which get recycled- or the glass that consumes so much energy to make. Filtered water is also a lot more economical than bottled water although not as cheap as tap water, but, it’ll keep your kettle free from limescale provided you replace the cartridge each month as instructed. It is also said to remove more chemicals than any other purification method.

All said and done, water is water. I am quite happy to drink it out of the tap at home even though I have a water filter which I use -as mentioned above- to combat the limescale in my kettle. I've got no problem paying for bottled water in a pub and am equally happy to pay for a bottle in a restaurant. What’s your view?