Most people are under the false assumption that bottled water is
superior to filtered water. That was certainly my impression until I researched
the difference between tap,
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Louboutin cheap, bottled and filtered water.
Now I certainly won't
admit that tap water is the purest form of drinking water. Depending where you
live, it contains its fair share of contaminants and impurities. At best, the
U.S. FDA attempts to set and enforce minimum health and safety standards for
consumption. Some tap water doesn't taste very good and that's one of the
reasons why I hardly ever drink it. So that leaves either filtered or bottled
water as the preferred source of drinking water for most of us.
Considering the differences between
bottled and filtered water was quite a surprise. My perception all along was
that anything packaged in a crystalline bottle was in its purest form and
relatively cheap. What I discovered was anything but that.
Cost is
actually a huge factor in the bottled water industry. While a small bottle can
be picked up for under two dollars, the cost to produce and dispose of that
bottle is staggering. Americans currently consume over 8.6 billion gallons of
bottled water or roughly 21 gallons of bottled water per capita in one year.
This amounts to over 50 billion bottles of water each year according to
Wikipedia.
That many bottles also add up to a huge cost to the
environment. Even with the recycling rate of these plastic bottles at just under
25%, a lot of plastic or Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) ends up in your local
landfill. According the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) there is a
significant environmental impact related to the production, transportation and
disposal of bottled water. In fact,
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society, during 2oo6, bottled water shipped into California from Fiji
amounted to 2,500 tons of global warming pollution. The NRDC also claims that in
2005, our landfills had 2 million tons of PET dumped into them.
There
could also be a health risk associated with bottled water. In a recent study
conducted by the NRDC testing the safety of bottled water, they discovered that
roughly 25 percent may actually be bottled tap water. In about 22 percent of
those brands tested by the NRDC, chemical contamination was present. In
addition, plastic bottles may even leach out chemicals known as phthalates which
can cause hormonal disruptions in men and women. Unfortunately,
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establish legal guidelines on the control of these chemicals in bottled
water.
If the health risk of consuming bottled water doesn't change your
mind, maybe the reality that 25 percent of all bottled water sold is no more
than pricey repackaged tap water. Investigative journalist, John Stossell, ran
an expose on ABC's "20/20" in 2005 which included a taste test of bottled water
and New York City tap water. What he discovered was a huge surprise. New Yorkers
ranked the most expensive bottled water dead last in the results. Tap water
actually ranked somewhere in the middle while the cheapest "big box store" came
in first place. Regardless, the results demonstrated that bottled water was
virtually no different than tap water when it came to taste. The big shock was
that it could cost 500 times more than the cost of tap water,
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That leads me
to filtered water. If you're like me,
Coach Purses, you'd
still prefer to drink water that has gone through some kind of a purification
process. But you don't want to spend a whole lot of money on potentially unsafe
bottled tap water. Filtered water systems that utilize carbon filtration and
reverse osmosis (RO) purification are hands down the best system money can buy.
These systems improve taste dramatically and remove almost every chemical and
contaminant from your tap. I derive much comfort in knowing that my water
purification system is at my fingertips and is effective and pays for itself in
both the short and long run. And I can also rest assured in the knowledge that
I've reduced my personal impact on the environment.
