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BANG FOR THE BITE
If 10,000 Biters give up bottled water in favor of a faucet mount, in five years we'll save a collective $1,300,000.
COCKTAIL FACT
A gallon of Evian typically costs more than the same amount of cola, gasoline, milk, or beer.
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home › tip library › Plastic Water Bottles
Are you spending money like water, on water?
The Bite
Tap into the cheaper way to stay hydrated. Use a home water filter to nix contaminants, and get a clean-as-bottled (if not cleaner) drinking supply without pouring money down the drain.The Benefits
- More cash in your pocket. On average, tap water costs $0.0015 per gallon; just a 16-oz bottle can cost $2 at the convenience store.
- Fewer contaminants. Baddies like chlorine, cryptosporidium, giardia, lead, and pesticide can get into unfiltered tap water, and up to 40% of bottled water comes from regular old city water systems.
- Less plastic waste. Americans consume more than 2.5 million bottles of water every hour, and only around 10% are recycled.
Personally Speaking
All the Biter staff have either faucet mounts or pitchers at home. When we need to take water with us, we pull out our Biter bottles and fill 'em up.Wanna Try?
- So-Clear UnderCounter Perma-Filter - a highly filtrating system that uses recyclable filters and fits under your sink ($220).
- Brita On Tap System - faucet-mount system you can attach without tools; available everywhere ($37).
- Pur Ultimate Pitcher - a cool space-agey pitcher option; widely available ($20).
- Water Filter Comparisons - check out the top 10 home water filters, rated by cost and performance.
Need your water to go? Look for tomorrow's water bottle tip!
Jul 11,2007
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All editorial suggestions in this tip are the result of testing and a preference for the tip topic. No advertiser has paid to have its company referenced in the tip. For more information, please read our Editorial Policy.
Maybe I Love Gavin Again
OK, so I once wanted to marry Gavin.
Then he seemed sorta slimy to me (besides, he's a little too pretty. I want to be the prettiest one in the relationship).
Now, with his recent ban on individually bottled water in SF municipal offices, I just might love him again. I just might.
Then again, I think I am a little old for him. ;) He's definitely a little old for me...
-Heather... off to get a crush on someone appropriate for once...
Biter Comments...
What about fluoride? I understand that filters don't remove it when cities add it to drinking water and that middle-aged women who tend toward osteoporosis should avoid it, particularly when we're trying to be healthy and drink our 64 ounces of water a day. I did switch to spring water in gallon containers instead of 24-ounce bottles though.
I heard that "2.5 million-bottles-of-water-an-hour" statistic on the Live Earth coverage over the weekend. That totally floored me! My Nalgene comes with me everywhere - sometimes filled with beverages other than water ;) especially if i'm going to a show - but, I think it's time for a Biter Bottle! At home, the Brita is the best! Although it makes me sad when I have to throw the filter out - creating more waste... hmmm I may have to rethink Brita. Don't mind me... just thinking out loud :)
Well those filters are not biodegradable and usually have plastic packaging/holders that can't be recycled.
What about this ceramic filtered water crock from Gaiam? The filter housing holds charcoal and there's no plastic packaging/holder to dispose of. I'm thinking about getting this one, although the price tag is pretty hefty. Does anyone have this? What do you think?
http://www.gaiam.com/retail/product/01-0465
For a review of the ceramic filter, see: http://www.grist.org/advice/ask/2007/06/27/H2O_filters/index.html?source=rss
It is a myth that bottled water is "cleaner" than most tap water (water from municipal systems). Municipal systems must be tested by independent laboratories and follow EPA standards while private bottling companies can test their own water and follow FDA standards. For the most part the EPA and FDA standards are similar, but the EPA is a little more strict. On top of this, think about all of the plastic bottles. Home filters are definately a better option if you need to filter more.
Not only the waste involved in bottled water has my attention now, but I recently had one of my Missoula friends visit and she was chugging out of a suspicious mason jar. "Drinking a little moonshine there Angel?" I asked, she said no, that she ditched the Nalgene bottle after a discussion on PVC and opted for the glass, she likes that you can see that it's clean and that we have them everywhere. So if it is just a bit o H2O you need and you arent out climbing rocks (broken glass is no fun) this may be an easy, head turning, alternate to buying the bottle.
Ester I'm not sure where you live, but I recently moved back to Chicago from Los Angeles (where the tap water smells like feet and tastes even worse) and love drinking straight from the tap. We even removed the filter from the Brita pitcher for our chilled supply in the fridge. Chicago has great water which (in my opinion, but shared by everyone I know) is superior to bottled. Evian tastes like greasy dirt to me, and the bottles of Nestle contain sulfites as preservatives (?) and cause an alergic reaction similar to when I drink domestic wine. So that is a deffinate no-no.
thanks raychelle for the link to the ceramic crock. i've been tempted to purchase something like this, but as you said, the price tag is a bit hefty for me at the moment. i may go for a faucet filter or something like that. our tap water isn't so bad, but to me the Brita water tastes really good.
i've also heard about the PVC issue with Nalgene bottles. i definitely keep mine probably a little longer than i should. i'll have to look into other portable water devices. thanks for the great suggestions everyone!
I love tap water, but we moved to a new town about 2 years ago and have had to add a water softener because the hard water was destroying our appliances. There is NO WAY I am going to drink water softened water. It tastes AWFUL. Any suggestions?
I refill 5 gallon bottles at Dillion's for $0.39 a gallon. I *think* it comes out to about $80 per year, whereas if you buy bottled water every day it can come out to over $1,000 a year.
Municipal water is tested at public facilities and random taps. If it is not tested at your tap then you cannot trust the results. Most of it is tested before it goes through miles of clay and PVC piping held together with toxic glues and compounds. Something to think about. PVC is the most prevalent type of piping in use today. People have retrofitted houses with it because it is cheaper and easier to install than copper or IPEX. For long distances and embedding in concrete slabs it makes even more economical sense to contractors mass-producing homes. It is used for garden hoses and landscape piping. If your home does use copper piping, they are held together with lead based solder that can corrode and leak into your drinking water. Some homes use galvanized steal which contains lead and also rusts over time, turning the initial burst of water brown. If your home was built before 1986, it could have lead pipes, which leads to even more contamination possibilities. Also your brass fixtures can lead to contamination as well.
All of this is mentioned on the EPA website for water quality. So unless you can guarantee that there is no contamination from your city' storage facility to the tap, you are best off filtering your water.
http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/standards/
Did any of the Bay Area Biters see today's article in the Chronicle?
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/11/MNGFVQUHC21.DTL
Does anyone know if household water filtration systems are effective against the heavy duty synthetic chemicals that are mentioned in this article?
I agree that bottled water should be avoided whenever possible - if only for the reduction in waste alone.
You might want to have pointed out however, that the Water Filter Comparisson site that you link to has some dubious disclosure practices. The creator of the site, Charles Strand, is the president of Sun Water Systems, the parent company of Aquasana. Suspiciously, Aquasana seems to come out clearly ahead of the competition on the comparison.
There's a great discussion thread on the issue at might have been a better choice to include as an informative link.
Further credence to the dubiousness of the Water Filter Comparison site:
Looking at IP addresses of the sites:
www.aquasana.com: 66.111.110.19
waterfiltercomparisons.com: 66.111.110.18
Adjacent IP addresses? What a coincidence! They are probably even hosted on the same webserver!
I liked Esther's point about using money saved by drinking tap water instead of bottled being donated to organizations that provide safe water to people. Check out this organization that's running around the world to do just that!
www.blueplanetrun.org
I'm from Sweden and we really do
have great and properly tested
water :-) I grew up in a house
from 1850, and our only
restriction was not to drink
hot water from the tap.
I didn't know it was so bad
elsewhere, therefor I have som questions?
If you can't drink the tap water,
what do you use for cooking
or toothbrushing? Is there any
difference in american and
eurpean water plants/ pipes?
When it comes to osteoporosis
phosphour is the worst, so I hope
you, Vicki, has stoped with meat,
milk and coca-cola already.
Fluoride, in reasonable amounts,
protects from osteoporisis,
but needs to be in balance with
calcium. Calcium you get from
green vegatables, soy products
and sesame seeds, for example.
OK..the bottled vs. Tap vs. filtered. We preformed a test not so long ago on tap and bottled water for fecal coliform. We had a few test viles. One held strait tap, one held bottled and a couple held tap water which some of the participants dipped their unwashed fingers in. Remember from a couple of the previous comments, bottled is not regulated as strictly as tap in most cases. Well,the tap water came out the cleanest and to our surprise, the bottled water was dirtier than the dirtiest finger sample! Yucky! Makes you want to run out and grab a bottle huh? We also learned that the filtration pitchers remove chemicals from the water to make it taste better but did you know that those chemicals kill potentially harmful bacteria? So the longer the water sits in the refridgerator or where ever, the bacteria is blooming because there is nothing left to kill it. Anyways...waste generated from bottles and filters doen't make sense to me. I agree that those ceramic filters might be something to look into if it is totally necessary to filter your H2O.
Like Fiona and Nicole, I looked at waterfiltercomparisons.com, was suspicious of the data source, and traced it back to Charles Strand and Aquasana. Going a step further, it seems that at least one (probably more) companies in the comparison chart have newer models that might have compared more favorably to the Aquasana (e.g., Culligan SY2650 replaces SY2300). I'm in the market for a few filters, but I will probably not buy Aquasana's because of their misrepresentative marketing. It's a shame, because it does seem as though they are among the better choices out there, but, for me, going "green" includes a kind of ethical test that this does not pass.
I want to chime in on the dubious quality of the information on the Water Filter Comparison link.
Check this out: http://www.triptronix.net/ishbadiddle/archives/2006/02/24/11.09.27/
There's a better source for comparison information on that site (from a company owned by About.com/The New York Times.
C'mon Ideal Bite. You can't be lax on verifying your sources.
And my apologies for missing the post above mine that says the exact same thing!
I think this whole bottled water thing got started when people were looking for a healthier alternative to soft drinks. Now of course, you can buy single servings of coloured flavoured sugar to add to your single serving of water...sigh.
Since when, though, do we have to take a bottle of water everywhere we go? Hydration is great, but unless you are working in the desert, or maybe a construction site, why do you need your own water bottle? Can't you just drink a cup of water at mealtimes and breaks? What has happened to all the water fountains?
I see people in malls carrying their water bottles...it's not a marathon, people!
And why would anyone spend $20 on a heavy metal water bottle, when you can get a reusable plastic, non-leaching container for about a buck?
@Evelyn,
thanks for bringing sanity back to the thread.
Well, one more reason not to use Nalgene bottles in addition to the new discovery of their leaching toxins into your beverage (note: please read that part of the bite, Evelyn), is that Nalgene is the number one supplier of water bottles for lab animals. In other words, supporting Nalgene means supporting animal testing. Double-yuck!
Everyone should check out the Multipure water filter - as far as I know it's the best on the market!
okay kudos to jennifer 7/12/07...and she has the 3rd party confirmed by NSF.org 'most effective' point of use [POU] drinking water system NSF has tested in 63 yrs of operation...by pass the cold water line if using typical 'salt based' softner and use a Multipure for the drinking water leaving the minerals IN [otherwise the SALT mineral will go right thru the unit... and a 10 yr program w/ Multipure is less than the R/O that the 'salt sellers' will try to sell for 700 to 1500 bucks to 'polish' the 'high quality' drinking water by removing the SALT and making a VERY ACIDIC 'drink']and lastly the HEAVILY 'pushed' brita [CHEAP and based on 'illusion'..not REALITY...]is owned by the company that sells chlorine....C_OROX... 'get the "L" OUT... So nealy all poisons chemicals and carcinogens HAVE NO , that's ... NO .... TASTE IN the BEGINNING... and the thus the DBP's are left behind for people/pets to drink... and the 'water doesn't TASTE BAD'...however the DBP's are carcinogenic [ see JOURNAL OF NATIONAL CANCER INSTITITUE issue 6/18/97 page 848 to 856...if you can..]
So what kind of on the go bottle would the people of this blog suggest? Those nifty metal ones cost a bit and the top is sooo very small. I could see them becoming quite difficult to clean. My significant other tends to leave containers in his truck until an ecosystem developes in them. It's ruined a bunch of "nice/not cheap" metal coffee mugs. I reuse my plastic bottles probably way too many times and I'm concerned with endocrin issues due to so much plastic in my life.
Thanks for the input.
Jennifer, I love my Klean Kanteen stainless steel bottle. The mouth is larger than the SIGG-type bottles, making it easier to clean and easier to drink out of. Comes with the option of a sport top or loop top. I prefer the latter. Check it out at http://www.rei.com/product/738271
Good luck.
Angela..I have been using a Stefani Linea natural terracotta water purifier/crock with ceramic filter candles which looks and functions the same way as the Gaiam water crock. I was always on the look out for a cheaper, eco friendly and effective alternative to buying bottled water when I discovered the Stefani purifier with filters.
I have used the Stefani for about a year and really love the simplicity and ease of use. I love that the filtered water tastes natural, and doesnt have any foul smells or odors like tap water usually does. The ceramic filter candles in the purifier remove the impurities that may be present in tap water.
I bought my purifier from http://www.stefaniterracotta.com.
Why buy bottled water when you can have access to pure, grat tasting water right at home?;)
Jessica
PHOTO ALBUMS
Posted by: Ester Ytterbrink | July 11, 2007 at 02:22 AM