Don’t Give Up on Tap Water!

Being in the business of selling reusable bottles and recommending tap water, I cringe when I hear news stories about unwanted chemicals like atrazine in our public drinking water supplies.   Firstly, I worry about the possible long term health effects on people and critters. Secondly, I worry that these stories will drive people to give up on our public water systems and increasingly rely on bottled water.   Elizabeth Royte, author of “Bottlemania” has responded to the latest barrage of bad news about tap water in her article entitled: Every Story about Chemicals in Drinking Water is a Gift to the Bottled Water Industry.  I couldn’t agree more.

In a nutshell, bottled water is not a viable alternative to public water systems, nor is it necessarily any safer!  If you aren’t familiar with the gross inefficiency and wastefulness of bottled water compared to tap water, please watch our Back2Tap  video to learn about the life cycle of a bottle of water. 

What we need is continual improvement of our current public water systems.  So don’t give up on tap water – encourage the EPA to update drinking water regulations based upon up-to-date independently-financed scientific research.  We do need to be sure that our public water supplies are protective of health.  Support investment to improve our public water systems.  In the long run, it’ll cost us all a lot less than buying our drinking water in bottles.  In the meantime, if you live in an agricultural area, you might want to seriously consider filtering your tap water at home during the growing season.

Battle over Bottled Water Heats Up

The bottled water phenomenon may be one of the biggest marketing hoaxes of all time.   Huge advertising budgets are spent to convince us that bottled water is healthier and better than tap water even though it isn’t.    What next, is someone going to start bottling and selling the air we breathe?   Some would say the bottled water company ads are misleading and some would say they are outright lies.  Tap water and reusable bottle proponents are becoming more and more creative and vocal in their challenge of this bottled water propaganda. 

On one flank of the battle against bottled water, Back2Tap has just posted a creative and thought-provoking awareness video on YouTube that debunks the myths about bottled water  – one by one.    It aims to raise the question in people’s minds: why am I still drinking bottled water?   No exaggeration is necessary to make the case – the waste associated with bottled water is repulsive.   Joining Back2Tap‘s longer educational video for students, this new video is shorter and primarily for adults. 

A much racier approach is taken by another reusable bottle company whose TV ads insinuate that disposable plastic water bottles leach BPA (the hormone disruptor) which they don’t.  Providing misinformation in order to scare people into buying a reusable bottle goes over the edge in my opinion.  Not surprisingly, they are being sued by the International Bottled Water Association.  Another ad campaign described in a recent New York Times article: “An Environmental Group’s Campaign of Wry Lies against Bottled Water” tells amusing lies about bottled water that say “If bottled water companies can lie, we can too.”   At least this approach is funny and only promotes lies, tongue in cheek.

Let’s hope this multi-pronged counter-attack will push back the bottled water company highjacking of our senses and resources!