Bottled Water Cost Us 2,000 Times More Than Tap. Is It Worth It?

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Something remarkable is happening this year. For the first time ever, sale of bottled water will outpace soda.

This may signal good news for everyones health. We all know that staying hydrated is critical for our bodies to sustain themselves, and drinking water is one of the best ways to give your body the hydration it craves( while drinking sugary sodas isnt ).

Still, all that bottled water goes at a pricequite literally. Globally, people expend around $100 billion a year on bottled water.( Americans account for well over half of that .) In the U.S ., bottled water expenses around 2, 000 times more than drinking water from the tap.

Then there are the environmental costs. Stimulating plastic water bottles outcomes in significant carbon emissions( a primary contributor to climate change) and eats up 17 million barrels of petroleum annuallyenough to gasoline one million vehicles for a whole year! Less than a quarter of the bottled water sold in the U.S. get recycled, which means that billions upon billions of water bottles are cluttering our landfills and polluting our land and oceans.

But one glance in a gas station refrigerator confirms that Americans have been willing to shoulder these costs in the quest for convenience and( presumably) additional health benefits beyond whats offered by tap water.

All of which begs the question: Is bottled water actually worth it?

How Your Bottled Water Stacks Up

In order to answer that question, we first need to ID what we entail by bottled water. As with any other consumer goods, over the last decade companies have gotten pretty creative in the quest to bottle up the next big trend. Enter wacky challengers such as maple water, cactus water and watermelon water, all of which boast their own potential merits.

For the purposes of this article, well focus on the basics. Heres how the five main categories of bottled water fare.

Spring Water

What it means: If you see these terms on your bottle, that tells you the water originates from an underground springtime( which must be identified on the label ). Related words such as glacier water or mountain water arent governed at all.

Worth the hype? Through the power of marketing, weve all been learned how to associate the words spring water with crystal-clear mountain creeks. Sounds delicious( and clean ), right? In reality, spring water can contain the same impurities you might found under well or tap water.( When companies claim that their water is 100% pure, they dont entail its devoid of impurities. It simply means that all of the water is extracted from an underground source .) In short, spring water may not be any cleaner than regular old tap water.

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Bottled Water Cost Us 2,000 Times More Than Tap. Is It Worth It?
Bottled Water Cost Us 2,000 Times More Than Tap. Is It Worth It?
Bottled Water Cost Us 2,000 Times More Than Tap. Is It Worth It?
Bottled Water Cost Us 2,000 Times More Than Tap. Is It Worth It?
Bottled Water Cost Us 2,000 Times More Than Tap. Is It Worth It?

Bottled Water Cost Us 2,000 Times More Than Tap. Is It Worth It?

Bottled Water Cost Us 2,000 Times More Than Tap. Is It Worth It?

Bottled Water Cost Us 2,000 Times More Than Tap. Is It Worth It?

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