Bottled water - Page 4

you can tell the difference if you lived in hawaii for a while, then go to the continental US, especially in a dirty main city like NYC or LA. even here in seattle the water generally has high enough chloramine residuals that you can taste it. the large companies like dasani and aquafina don't just pour tap water straight into the bottles. a lot of people are misguided because it was a big thing in the 90's for smaller companies to do this. bigger companies claim different water treatment techniques, and go through quite a rigorous process to prove that their water is cleaner. one of the biggest methods (but still quite expensive) is reverse osmosis, with artificial additives as defined by the FDA of minerals that were there in "naturally clean" waters but lost in the filtering/cleaning process. kind of ironic, but that's why it costs so much more for a bottle of "high quality" water than a cheap one. i interned for the city's water utilities for a year, and one of the things i've learned is that you get what you pay for, until a certain breakpoint in pricing (much like clothes or shoes on SF). cheaper water (kenneth coles) is fine if you don't mind the chlorinated tastes of municipal water, but if you decide to pay more for brand name bottles (allen-edmonds, crockett/jones), you'll get water that's a lot better in quality and contain significantly less contaminants (trihalomethanes and other chloramines). if you decide to buy exotic name brands of water (john lobb, gaziano/girling), you'll get marginally better tasting water than mainstream brand names, but at this point you are buying simply because you can and simply because you appreciate the effort in attaining something close to perfection as humanly possible and not because you want that extra 10% increase in water quality.

I've had some these, and they do taste different, but I actually prefer the cheaper waters, like costco over the more expensive ones, but this doesn't include sparkling water. I haven't, for any price found something I like more than gerolsteiner.

Costco water is fine to me. In general I prefer to drink from the tap.

What I don't understand is how some people can buy bottled water which clearly tastes like plastic. I have tasted this in particular with Crystal Geyser. You don't like mineral taste, but you like the flavor of chemically-formulated plastic leeching into your drinking water?

I can tell the difference, unless its just some mental complex I have lol..

Aquafina...wins

never really bothered with bottled water. has a ridiculous environmental impact that I can avoid by just using a water-filter at home. even that isn't really needed since we have some of the world's cleanest tap-water up here

yes, the water companies all make a bottle less due to your courage - environmental impact avoided.

you know, when I had the 5 gallon water dispenser at my apartment, I drank SIGNIFICANTLY more water, was healthier because of it...ate less, was in better shape. Just the convienience I guess. but it sucked having those big jugs around though. also, travel alot...i'd always come back and there would be water jugs just sitting outside my door for like a week

great logic there, lol. the point I'm making is that if a million people had the same attitude, that would be countless amounts of less bottles used. every little bit adds up.

I think there's some justice issues with bottled water, so I try to avoid it.

I never buy bottled water. The tap water where I live is of great quality, so there's no need for me to buy bottled water.

I love fiji too, but stopped buying bottled water. Ever see the NYTimes magazine article about the amount of bottles not being recycled? It's staggering. I'm back to my britta.