7 ms·

There is another reason for buying bottled water, and that's because tap water in a convenient container is not available... I have no data on the reasons peop

by new299 9y ago

There is another reason for buying bottled water, and that's because tap water in a convenient container is not available... I have no data on the reasons people purchase bottled water. But every time I've purchased bottled water it's because I was traveling and wanted to drink straight water while traveling. I'm sure some part of the market buy spring water because it's "healthy". However, without further data I don't think it's possible to support the argument that it's a sign of "America's decline". In fact, I've also seen bottled water sold in every location around the world I've traveled to, including areas with good tap water, and both urban and rural locations.

jstewartmobile 9y ago
If people were only buying it as a convenience, it would be a non-issue. But it is an issue. They draw incredible amounts of water from several systems throughout the country because people with perfectly good tap water buy cases of the stuff every week as their sole source of drinking water.
- UsernameProxy 9y ago
  How do I know if I have good tap water?
  - mrgordon 9y ago
    You can likely find info online. In San Francisco we get information in the mail once a year. Probably because they want to brag about how good it is :)
    - notyourwork 9y ago
      I'm not sure why the smiley face, I have received the same "bragging" letter in a midwest state and a state north of San Francisco. Lots of places in US have good (or should I say standard) water.
      - mrgordon 9y ago
        And that’s great! I never implied San Francisco is the only place with high water quality. I’m not talking about “standard” water though. San Francisco gets water from snowmelt so it has noticeably less contaminants than most water supplies. It routinely ranks among the top few water sources in the United States "You guys have the best water that we tested. Period," Snyder said of San Francisco's drinking water. "I don't think we've ever tested drinking water that didn't have any of our target compounds in it." https://www.google.com/amp/www.sfgate.com/green/amp/S-F-s-tap-water-best-in-tests-chemists-say-3291449.php https://www.google.com/amp/www.sfgate.com/green/amp/S-F-s-ta...
  - jstewartmobile 9y ago
    I don't know about "good," but it's always money well spent to get a test kit from the home store (Home Depot and Lowes both sell them for $20-$30). Sometimes you can have an issue caused by your home that has nothing to do with the public supply. Knew one person who found out his sewage pipes were somehow mingling with his fresh water ones this way. How that even happens, I do not know...
  - amelius 9y ago
    There should be a website that tells you for your current GPS location the quality of the tap water.
- new299 9y ago
  > If people were only buying it as a convenience, it would be a non-issue. But it is an issue. You say this as if it were a fact, but no evidence has been provided to support this. This is a general issue with online communities, lowers the quality of discourse, and makes it hard to come to a consensus. So... here's one reference I found [1]. The paper tries to correlate perceived quality of local water supply and consumption of bottled water. They found that 13.4% of users used bottled water as their primary source of water. The paper contains many other interesting data points for example: "When all other conditions were exactly equal, a respondent who was one year older in age was about 2% less likely to use bottled water as the primary source of drinking water. From a gender standpoint, the odds that a female uses bottled water for primary drinking source are 1.32 times as much as the odds for a male, with all other conditions being equal. Education level was not a significant predictor for bottled water use." Either bottle water use decreases with age, or bottle water use is more popular among the new generations, and can be expected to increase with time. It would be useful to have data about this. However, using bottled water as your primary source of water is still somewhat niche. I'm not sure it's a good indicator of the decline of American society, as was suggested. Also: > More often than not, people buying that Nestle water live in places where the tap has better scores than where the water was bottled in the first place. The data appears to show that the majority of people buying bottled water, do not do so as their primary source of water. And are perhaps more likely just engaged in casual consumption (or while traveling etc as suggested). [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3084479/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3084479/
  - jstewartmobile 9y ago
    a) Anyone who keeps tabs on the news doesn't need a peer-reviewed article to understand that bottling-companies-gone-wild is indeed an issue. These stories are fairly common. b) Wrote "sole source of drinking water", not "primary source of water". They're not bathing in Nestle... yet. c) Literally everyone I know goes through a case of the stuff every week. Anecdotal, I know. Sue me.
    - new299 9y ago
      > a) Anyone who keeps tabs on the news doesn't need a peer-reviewed article to understand that bottling-companies-gone-wild is indeed an issue. These stories are fairly common. I'm pretty sure not everyone reads the same news sites... in any case, most new reporting is pretty poor. But referencing it, would at least provide a starting point for discussion. > b) Wrote "sole source of drinking water", not "primary source of water". They're not bathing in Nestle... yet. If you read the article I referenced the question as asked is "Do you primarily purchase bottled water for your drinking water?". So yes, this is about drinking water. I mistakenly assumed that was clear from the context. > c) Literally everyone I know goes through a case of the stuff every week. Anecdotal, I know. Sue me. Yes, this is not useful as a discussion point. If you have a link to a survey or other reference that's useful. It's possible that things have changed since the 2011 article I posted.
rando444 9y ago
In my country (Iceland) everyone uses their own containers and nobody drinks bottled water but tourists. In fact you never even saw still bottled water in stores up until just a few years ago. The water that comes out of the tap is some of the most pristine stuff in the world, but you still see tourists loading several 2 liter bottles of the stuff into their shopping carts because they don't know any better.. It makes me sad to see the waste created in the environment due to ignorance. It's common practice to use re-usable drinking containers.. and you can do this while traveling as well. It's like bringing your own shopping bag, people didn't used to do this often, but now it's become more of a trend and it's good for the environment. Now we just need to get people to realize that it's perfectly fine to re-use the same drinking container. It's not a hard concept, it's just laziness and apathy that drive these profits.
- tiku 9y ago
  Almost the same here in the Netherlands. I guess the north of Europe has enough money for nice water filtration. One big thing is that we use the clean drinking water for showering and flushing our toilet also, this could be a great water saver for the future if we could have a substream of lesser quality water to use for these purposes.
  - blubb-fish 9y ago
    > Almost the same here in the Netherlands. I guess the north of Europe has enough money for nice water filtration. I doubt that water filtration is particularly expensive compared to stuff like defense expenses or buying out banks. It's more about whether a government cares about providing an egalitarian long term solution for clean water. The US government doesn't care about black people being unjustly shot dead by police or for providing health care. Of course they don't care about something as abstract as clean water.
    - teekert 9y ago
      I think it is also about the insanely large network in the US compared to tiny Netherlands (Netherlands is about 300 km by 150 km). Water has more time to go bad in those long pipes. to see how small the Netherlands is: https://mapfight.appspot.com/texas-vs-nl/texas-netherlands-size-comparison https://mapfight.appspot.com/texas-vs-nl/texas-netherlands-s...
blubb-fish 9y ago
> tap water in a convenient container is not available. that's b/c some people are so spoiled they wouldn't even consider taking a bottle and filling it up under a tap source. > In fact, I've also seen bottled water sold in every location around the world I've traveled to, including areas with good tap water, and both urban and rural locations. B/c of above reason. Just fill a bottle. If that's too much - then this is an indicator of mental decline.
- jlebrech 9y ago
  americans do a lot of driving and places might have dirty water along their route.
  - blubb-fish 9y ago
    I didn't say that this particular behavior is unjustified - of course handicapped water supply will make people come up with alternative supply solutions which will discourage implementing a reasonable water supply - a vicious circle. Also from a holistic perspective there is a relationship between no reliable communal water supply and people driving with own car instead of public transportation which often doesn't exist. Public transportation is just another resource in an abstract way - logistical resources. Don't exist as well. US is fundamentally about "take care of yourself". This just won't work in overcrowded areas.
- new299 9y ago
  > B/c of above reason. Just fill a bottle. If that's too much - then this is an indicator of mental decline. That a pretty heavy handed value judgment, made seemingly without any consideration that people have differing requirements and lifestyles. It might not be easy, for example, to wash a water container while traveling. Which it may be wise to do daily [1]. Suggesting that everyone who drinks bottled water is in mental decline to me seems unjustified. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wait-youre-supposed-to-wash-your-water-bottle-how-often_us_57a357b2e4b04414d1f3bf3a http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wait-youre-supposed-to-w...
  - 9y ago
microcolonel 9y ago
One major reason to buy commercially bottled water is that it tends to store safely at room temperature more/less indefinitely. Tap water in many places is not sufficiently chlorinated to safely store long-term. For what it's worth, I think the standards for basically all drinking water, including municipal supplies, are pretty low. Accepted levels of arsenic in ground and tap water (and probably some bottled water) are calibrated to a shockingly high tolerance for causing cancer, well above the typical target risk of one in a million.
teekert 9y ago
Here in the Netherlands bottles like these are widely popular: https://dopper.com/ https://dopper.com/ and http://join-the-pipe.org/ http://join-the-pipe.org/ (there always a project for water in the third world attached) to be honest, the places I have been in the US the tap water tasted like over-chlorinated pool water and I would drink it either. Tap water in the Netherlands is very nice though.
dkersten 9y ago
I buy bottled water because my home and office tap water tastes disgusting (I've tried various water filters and they didn't help. I'll probably try a reverse-osmosis filter soon). I also buy bottled water when I'm travelling, like you.
deepGem 9y ago
If every check out counter had a tap for dispensing water, you could fill up your container while paying the bill. Reduces so much of the friction you speak about.

by new299 9y ago

jstewartmobile 9y ago

If people were only buying it as a convenience, it would be a non-issue. But it is an issue. They draw incredible amounts of water from several systems throughout the country because people with perfectly good tap water buy cases of the stuff every week as their sole source of drinking water.

UsernameProxy 9y ago
How do I know if I have good tap water?
- mrgordon 9y ago
  You can likely find info online. In San Francisco we get information in the mail once a year. Probably because they want to brag about how good it is :)
  - notyourwork 9y ago
    I'm not sure why the smiley face, I have received the same "bragging" letter in a midwest state and a state north of San Francisco. Lots of places in US have good (or should I say standard) water.
    - mrgordon 9y ago
      And that’s great! I never implied San Francisco is the only place with high water quality. I’m not talking about “standard” water though. San Francisco gets water from snowmelt so it has noticeably less contaminants than most water supplies. It routinely ranks among the top few water sources in the United States "You guys have the best water that we tested. Period," Snyder said of San Francisco's drinking water. "I don't think we've ever tested drinking water that didn't have any of our target compounds in it." https://www.google.com/amp/www.sfgate.com/green/amp/S-F-s-tap-water-best-in-tests-chemists-say-3291449.php https://www.google.com/amp/www.sfgate.com/green/amp/S-F-s-ta...
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  I don't know about "good," but it's always money well spent to get a test kit from the home store (Home Depot and Lowes both sell them for $20-$30). Sometimes you can have an issue caused by your home that has nothing to do with the public supply. Knew one person who found out his sewage pipes were somehow mingling with his fresh water ones this way. How that even happens, I do not know...
- amelius 9y ago
  There should be a website that tells you for your current GPS location the quality of the tap water.
new299 9y ago
> If people were only buying it as a convenience, it would be a non-issue. But it is an issue. You say this as if it were a fact, but no evidence has been provided to support this. This is a general issue with online communities, lowers the quality of discourse, and makes it hard to come to a consensus. So... here's one reference I found [1]. The paper tries to correlate perceived quality of local water supply and consumption of bottled water. They found that 13.4% of users used bottled water as their primary source of water. The paper contains many other interesting data points for example: "When all other conditions were exactly equal, a respondent who was one year older in age was about 2% less likely to use bottled water as the primary source of drinking water. From a gender standpoint, the odds that a female uses bottled water for primary drinking source are 1.32 times as much as the odds for a male, with all other conditions being equal. Education level was not a significant predictor for bottled water use." Either bottle water use decreases with age, or bottle water use is more popular among the new generations, and can be expected to increase with time. It would be useful to have data about this. However, using bottled water as your primary source of water is still somewhat niche. I'm not sure it's a good indicator of the decline of American society, as was suggested. Also: > More often than not, people buying that Nestle water live in places where the tap has better scores than where the water was bottled in the first place. The data appears to show that the majority of people buying bottled water, do not do so as their primary source of water. And are perhaps more likely just engaged in casual consumption (or while traveling etc as suggested). [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3084479/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3084479/
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  a) Anyone who keeps tabs on the news doesn't need a peer-reviewed article to understand that bottling-companies-gone-wild is indeed an issue. These stories are fairly common. b) Wrote "sole source of drinking water", not "primary source of water". They're not bathing in Nestle... yet. c) Literally everyone I know goes through a case of the stuff every week. Anecdotal, I know. Sue me.
  - new299 9y ago
    > a) Anyone who keeps tabs on the news doesn't need a peer-reviewed article to understand that bottling-companies-gone-wild is indeed an issue. These stories are fairly common. I'm pretty sure not everyone reads the same news sites... in any case, most new reporting is pretty poor. But referencing it, would at least provide a starting point for discussion. > b) Wrote "sole source of drinking water", not "primary source of water". They're not bathing in Nestle... yet. If you read the article I referenced the question as asked is "Do you primarily purchase bottled water for your drinking water?". So yes, this is about drinking water. I mistakenly assumed that was clear from the context. > c) Literally everyone I know goes through a case of the stuff every week. Anecdotal, I know. Sue me. Yes, this is not useful as a discussion point. If you have a link to a survey or other reference that's useful. It's possible that things have changed since the 2011 article I posted.

rando444 9y ago

In my country (Iceland) everyone uses their own containers and nobody drinks bottled water but tourists. In fact you never even saw still bottled water in stores up until just a few years ago. The water that comes out of the tap is some of the most pristine stuff in the world, but you still see tourists loading several 2 liter bottles of the stuff into their shopping carts because they don't know any better.. It makes me sad to see the waste created in the environment due to ignorance. It's common practice to use re-usable drinking containers.. and you can do this while traveling as well. It's like bringing your own shopping bag, people didn't used to do this often, but now it's become more of a trend and it's good for the environment. Now we just need to get people to realize that it's perfectly fine to re-use the same drinking container. It's not a hard concept, it's just laziness and apathy that drive these profits.

tiku 9y ago
Almost the same here in the Netherlands. I guess the north of Europe has enough money for nice water filtration. One big thing is that we use the clean drinking water for showering and flushing our toilet also, this could be a great water saver for the future if we could have a substream of lesser quality water to use for these purposes.
- blubb-fish 9y ago
  > Almost the same here in the Netherlands. I guess the north of Europe has enough money for nice water filtration. I doubt that water filtration is particularly expensive compared to stuff like defense expenses or buying out banks. It's more about whether a government cares about providing an egalitarian long term solution for clean water. The US government doesn't care about black people being unjustly shot dead by police or for providing health care. Of course they don't care about something as abstract as clean water.
  - teekert 9y ago
    I think it is also about the insanely large network in the US compared to tiny Netherlands (Netherlands is about 300 km by 150 km). Water has more time to go bad in those long pipes. to see how small the Netherlands is: https://mapfight.appspot.com/texas-vs-nl/texas-netherlands-size-comparison https://mapfight.appspot.com/texas-vs-nl/texas-netherlands-s...

blubb-fish 9y ago

> tap water in a convenient container is not available. that's b/c some people are so spoiled they wouldn't even consider taking a bottle and filling it up under a tap source. > In fact, I've also seen bottled water sold in every location around the world I've traveled to, including areas with good tap water, and both urban and rural locations. B/c of above reason. Just fill a bottle. If that's too much - then this is an indicator of mental decline.

jlebrech 9y ago
americans do a lot of driving and places might have dirty water along their route.
- blubb-fish 9y ago
  I didn't say that this particular behavior is unjustified - of course handicapped water supply will make people come up with alternative supply solutions which will discourage implementing a reasonable water supply - a vicious circle. Also from a holistic perspective there is a relationship between no reliable communal water supply and people driving with own car instead of public transportation which often doesn't exist. Public transportation is just another resource in an abstract way - logistical resources. Don't exist as well. US is fundamentally about "take care of yourself". This just won't work in overcrowded areas.
new299 9y ago
> B/c of above reason. Just fill a bottle. If that's too much - then this is an indicator of mental decline. That a pretty heavy handed value judgment, made seemingly without any consideration that people have differing requirements and lifestyles. It might not be easy, for example, to wash a water container while traveling. Which it may be wise to do daily [1]. Suggesting that everyone who drinks bottled water is in mental decline to me seems unjustified. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wait-youre-supposed-to-wash-your-water-bottle-how-often_us_57a357b2e4b04414d1f3bf3a http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wait-youre-supposed-to-w...
- 9y ago

microcolonel 9y ago

One major reason to buy commercially bottled water is that it tends to store safely at room temperature more/less indefinitely. Tap water in many places is not sufficiently chlorinated to safely store long-term. For what it's worth, I think the standards for basically all drinking water, including municipal supplies, are pretty low. Accepted levels of arsenic in ground and tap water (and probably some bottled water) are calibrated to a shockingly high tolerance for causing cancer, well above the typical target risk of one in a million.

teekert 9y ago

Here in the Netherlands bottles like these are widely popular: https://dopper.com/ https://dopper.com/ and http://join-the-pipe.org/ http://join-the-pipe.org/ (there always a project for water in the third world attached) to be honest, the places I have been in the US the tap water tasted like over-chlorinated pool water and I would drink it either. Tap water in the Netherlands is very nice though.

dkersten 9y ago

I buy bottled water because my home and office tap water tastes disgusting (I've tried various water filters and they didn't help. I'll probably try a reverse-osmosis filter soon). I also buy bottled water when I'm travelling, like you.

deepGem 9y ago

If every check out counter had a tap for dispensing water, you could fill up your container while paying the bill. Reduces so much of the friction you speak about.