water from a tap or water from a bottle?

The town I grew up in was voted "best tasting tap water in the world" in 2010 by this competition: Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting

 

This has been a hot topic for a few years now, at least here in the United States. People have been spending upwards of $2 or more per bottle of water, and when it was discovered that this bottled water was, in fact, coming from the tap itself. People make a big deal over water for some reason. I guess we should be grateful to live in a time and in countries where we have it good enough to turn our noses up at water. There are people and places in the world that would be grateful for any water, even if it doesn't taste that great and is from the tap.

 

Thanks for the data and links posted above.
I understand what the chemicals are and their potential harmful effects if they are ingested.
But I don't see data on my situation, and the situation I think is common for most people: Using and reusing a plastic commercial water bottle over and over to contain water, without ever heating it.

 

Do you wash it with hot water? If yes, then you heat it up.

If you wash it with cold water or don't wash it at all, you can invite bacterial and fungal issues.

It's really a lose-lose-lose (I'm adding a lose for the environment ) to reuse a disposable bottle.

 

How's it a loss to the environment if you reuse a plastic bottle? I'd have thought it was a good thing for the environment to reuse resources

 

That's me being a little obnoxious and preachy. Personally, if you're going to reuse a plastic water bottle, I don't understand why you wouldn't just get a bottle that is made to be reused, instead of creating more demand for the disposable ones which use more resources to make and transport. If you're planning on using the same water bottle for days/weeks/months at a time and know that while buying the bottle, why not spend an extra few dollars for one you can use for years at a time?

 

My wife & a couple of the other teachers take turns buying bottled water to keep at work. I bitch about this because the school buys treated water in 5 gallon bottles and has a hot/cold dispenser in the teacher's lounge. "Why don't y'all just fill up some bottles and take them to the fridge close to your classrooms?" "It's too much trouble."

Aaauuuggghhh !

 

The building I work in has those filler nozzles. They even have the little screen that tells you how many water bottles you've saved. Each one is up to a couple thousand, and it's really fulfilling.

 

Hippies.

I love it.

 

I don't understand it. The best that I can figure is many of the teachers see refilling bottles as 'beneath them.' It's a private religious school, and most of the teachers aren't there for the pay. On a semi-related note, the front office has one of the fancy Keurig sinle-cup coffee makers which the school bought and also buys the single-brew cup thingys. A parent donated a Keurig machine to the teachers, but the school admin (bitch!) told the teachers that they would need buy their own coffee for it.

 

On reusing water bottles; I have been told that it's unsafe to do so. I read something on livestrong:
"Plastic containers are composed of chemicals that can leak out of the bottles and into the fluid. This occurs not only with water bottles, but also soda bottles, sports...Caption Danger lurks in the chemicals found in many plastic bottles....Reusable plastic water bottles are from high-density polyethylene"

I'm sure that most people aren't keeping these bottles for yearlong refills. I would be interested in learning how often you have to reuse a bottle before you have ingested enough chemicals to actually be affected. There are chemicals in everything that we eat, not to mention the air quality in some of our major cities.

 

When I moved to the Portland metro area (read: SW WA) I was amazed at how great the tap water was. I still remember how clean and sweet the water tasted the first time I drank it. When I'm at the grocery store, I marvel at the folks I see stocking up on bottled water, and am tempted to ask them what the heck they're thinking.

 

Ive visited some countries where there's no way in hell im drinking water from a tap. I'm extremely grateful that I live in a place where its safe to drink