Bottled water a pointless waste of money

I prefer to reuse the bottles from bottled water, then refill them with tap water and put in the freezer. After a few hours the water is deliciously icy cold and doesn't taste like crap tap water, and if you leave it long enough to get a few ice chunks forming its even nicer. Then jsut drink that. I have a few bottles on rotation when I'm in the house so there's always ice cold water.

Bottled water is a huge scam, costly to the environment in many ways and costly to our own pockets.

We should boycott it, and we should also boycott restaurants and establishments which refuse to serve tap water on request, on of these being Sherwoods Indian Restaurant in Hall Green, Birmingham, where the manager did not even have the spine to speak to me about the policy he forces his staff to implement.

Since the introduction of the new security arrangements at airports it is not possible to pre-buy your in-flight drinking water and take it with you through security. They will confiscate it. So you are inside the security zone and you look for a supplier of this necessity [if you don't drink water when in the air you risk all kinds of nasties]. You find one, only one. There is no competition: there is only one supplier, and they know it. So they place a huge mark up on this essential product. This is a classick rip-off!

So you decide not to buy [that is your only option], and wait until you are on the plane. Surprise - Surprise they charge for water there too, at an even higher price.

Welcome to Britain the country of penniless paupers!

Thames Water? Do you honestly trust that institution? They have doubled my water rates in 2 years flat. I now have to drink rain water. I am not properly metered regarding my consumption. TW couldn't give a damn. They just want to make money, like everyone else is this Kafkaesque existence.

It is a triumph of modern marketing that people in the United Kingdom, with universal access to cheap, clean water in the home, choose to consume an average of 37 litres of bottled water per person per year.

Unfortunately, a litre of bottled mineral water generates 600 times more carbon dioxide than a litre of tap water, and the polythene terephthalate bottles tend to sit around in landfills for a long time. Which is why Thames Water and Friends of the Earth have launched a campaign in the UK to rehabilitate tap water in restaurants and bars.

Tim O makes the most vaild points, the appalling harm that bottled water does to the environment. I have been offered Evian and Perrier (French) water on the other side of the world. It may be cost effective and a nice little profit earner for the French and for the restaurateurs who offer it but the enivronmental costs are enormous.

In India I would buy bottled water, sealed, but in most of Europe, the US, and other developed countries, no way. For those who are concerned about additives and contaminants, a microfilter will remove just about everything which could be harmful.

Bottled water, along with the EU, formal religion, and the Labour government, is one of the greatest scams of our time.

it tastes better. We don't drink any old rubbish water like you lot.

Tim - you obviously haven't tasted Northampton tap water!! You just KNOW that it is recycled sewage, because it tastes of chlorine. Thankfully I don't live there, only work there. In our village the tap water tastes delicious, and is obviously not recycled wee wee, thank goodness. However, it is full of brown scale, so we use water that has been chilled and filtered by our Samsung fridge. We have thus saved a fortune on buying bottled water, something I was never happy doing, but until we bought our new fridge was forced to.

Bottled water is a ripoff. If you have crappy water at home I can see purchasing large bottles of water, but the individual bottles...nuts! People complain about gas prices, but to get a gallon a gasoline, a dinosaur died several million years ago, then someone has to discover the dinosaur graveyard/oil field, pump the stuff out from several hundred to thousand of feet of earth, transport usually via boat halfway around the world to a refinery, refine it, then put it back on a truck and put in gas stations where there is a tank in the ground, sometimes a person who will pump it for you all for $3.00 a gallon. Aquafina or Dasani which is just filtered tap water is about $12/gallon (1.50 * 8) at the very least. At a movie theatre about $30 a gallon.

Most people can't tell the difference between bottled and tap. Bottled water didn't even exist 20 years ago. It is a scam. It is also horrible for the environment. All that plastic ends up in landfills, all the gas/diesel used to transport the stuff around (have you ever lugged around a gallon of water?...it takes a lot of energy).

OK, I buy an occasional bottle of water, but it is for convenience sake, but as a rule...don't do. Save your money and be a little richer for it.

As far a s Tap water is concerned.. Id rather take my chances with bottled Im afraid than drink water with additives like Fluoride which may be doing severe harm to us all despite benefit to teeth and also the writer has obviously never tasted London Tap water.. its so toxic your mouth ends up superdry from all the chemicals and precipitants picked up in the age old piping..sorry theres no way I can drink that and expect to live a healthy life
Yes the advice is good regarding the Plastic leeching.. and is why you never see fruit juice in plastic bottles, the same is also true for Microwaving and freezing food in plastics NEVER EVER MICROWAVE PLASTIC with FOOD!!!! and if possible dont BAKE, Fry or superheat your food because its like performing and eating your chemistry experiment, particularly with Carbohydrates due to creation of ACRYLAMIDE a known carcinogen... this is the scandal of Western society.. we perpetuate cooking knowing it kills us. Boil and Steam your food only.

You should come to Herefordshire. Our tapwater tastes like nothing you've ever tried before. Almost like a combination of machine oil and something that you can't quite put your finger on.

The entire mineral water industry is built on the consumers' mistaken belief in the conspiracy theory that municipal water is unfit to drink.

You've been had.