Table water in plastic bottles: contaminated and 100 times more expensive than straight from the tap

-"Why do we spend so much money buying water in plastic bottles when there is enough clean drinking water coming out of the tap?" - We asked this question last week and gave an initial answer: "No-name products have no chance against Brands". Here are the companies in the "bottled water industry" - there are the water organisations with a public mandate: to provide drinking water for everyone - always. And now we want to take a closer look at that.

We spend a lot of money on water because mineral water or bottled water is presented and advertised as valuable.

On the other hand, there are the water companies that fulfill a public task - even if they are partly organized privately. Their mission is to ensure that the population is always supplied with sufficient, good, clean, uncontaminated drinking water - today and in the future, and at reasonable prices. This water is invisible - because it is always there.

In this situation, the officially authorized tap water suppliers, but also all of us, can be accused of some negligence.

First of all, we recognized far too late the danger that the triumph of plastic bottled water would have dramatic consequences for the environment and for the water supply as a whole. Also that plastic bottles would conquer the whole world so quickly.

But what is perhaps even worse is that we have given the proponents of bottled water complete sovereignty in explaining the situation, the differences between the types of water. They are the ones who tell the story.

“We have given the proponents of bottled water complete sovereignty in explaining the situation, the differences between the types of water. They are the ones who tell the story."

We need to take back the power of interpretation.

One aspect of this story is that there are only two opponents: the tap water suppliers and the bottled water companies.

This apparent alternative seems completely normal to us today - and anyone looking for statistics, data, and figures will find only these two "options for water supply".

This representation is quite simply wrong. Not because tap water should shy away from comparison, on the contrary - but because bottled water does not form a separate category, but a hodgepodge of different types of water and packaging.

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Bottled water - a hodgepodge of different types of water+

We are talking about bottled water - and by that we mean a whole host of different things:

Glass bottles, disposable and deposit bottles, PET plastic bottles for single use or PET deposit bottles for multiple use.

We are dealing with simple reuse of the plastic or recycling into new PET bottles. And we are talking about cheap plastic bottles that need to be disposed of after use.

And of course we are talking about regional suppliers and the worldwide distribution of high-price brand products - and these different categories of water are all lumped together by the by the bottled water industry.

Tap water is checked daily and more often - mineral water is checked once at the opening of the sale.

With tap water we are dealing with drinking water that is uniformly subject to EU laws and national guidelines and is strictly controlled - bigger water supplier have to control the water several times a day.

Mineral water companies require government approval before they can sell water. But that means: when they are approved, no one will check again without a good reason.

The types of bottled water - see the picture above: By bottled water we mean mineral water from deep groundwater layers, protected from all kinds of environmental pollution; we mean spring water, which has to be bottled directly at the source. And we are talking about table water, which is any mix of all possible types of water - and which can, for example, consist of up to 100 percent tap water*

And these very different types of water you can buy in bottles, mostly in plastic bottles and praised together as an alternative to drinking water from the tap.

This ingenious move by the bottled water industry now allows any mixing of the properties of these different types of water and packaging: advantages of one type become advantages of bottled water in general, disadvantages of the other type are marginalized. But Larger quantities of micro and nano plastic particles have now been detected in water from plastic bottles than feared - particles that do not exist in tap water.

An example: Bottled water is too expensive? In return, you get water of the purest nature, from the deepest depths, enriched by nature with minerals and other substances - of course this will cost a little bit more, but the taste, the nature, the minerals. This applies to mineral water at best, but is not even an argument for mineral water, let alone table water.

And shortly: Larger quantities of micro and nano plastic particles have now been detected in water from plastic bottles than feared - particles that do not exist in tap water.

It gets perfidious when we fill regular tap water into plastic bottles as table water, cart them around the country and then sell them for 100 times the cost of tap water. I was recently able to buy table water - 9 liters for €1.80, at home 9 liters from the tap cost me about 1.8 cents. The fact that I like the water better at home could also be down to habit...

?Tap water is one of the best-controlled foods in the EU, but the different types of bottled water are not controlled as standard - neither mineral water, spring water nor table water after bottling.We will certainly be dealing with these issues often. Our preliminary conclusion is:

From now on, we will only compare the healthy, best-controlled version of our drinking water from the tap with mineral water, spring water or table water. These comparisons enable us to calculate the actual costs for our wallets, but also for our environment and our drinking water supply situation...

Conclusion

We have to pay close attention to the arguments used to promote all kinds of bottled water - and we have to start confidently putting tap water in the spotlight. Because tap water is the real and only star in the drinking water sky - of course we hope to soon be able to present another one with the SunAir-Fountain? panels.

We can consider ourselves lucky if we have a connection to the water pipe. But we will never tire of explaining to all the people who prefer to use the plastic bottle how terribly they have been misled and what tremendous effects this has on all of us and our world.

Luc Métivier , our CEO, says: "For us at Agua de Sol, this is a great incentive to vigorously push ahead with the development of the SunAir-Fountain? panel in order to offer a real alternative even where there is no clean tap water."

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* The term table water sounds like high quality. But compared to mineral and tap water, it has the fewest requirements. It often consists of a mixture of tap water and mineral water. In some cases, the drinking water from the public network is simply carbonated and bottled.