Reasons to Never Drink Bottled Water Again
With the bad PR bottled water gets in the press, outreach from environmental groups and peer pressure from green-loving friends, you’d think people would not dare pick up a plastic bottle. But even the most “anti” of us do—on occasion. And apparently, there more people are drinking bottled water regularly. A LOT more.
The consumption of bottled water in the USA surged from 354 million gallons in 1976 to almost 12 billion gallons in 2015. That is a staggering 2,700% increase. These numbers imply that not only are occasional consumers drinking more “occasionally,” but also many more people are switching to bottled water as a primary source of drinking water. Why?
One reason they think people are switching from sugary soft drinks to bottled water, is because they thinking it is healthier. Market research giant Euromonitor found that in 2016, for the first time, people consumed more bottled water than carbonated (soft) drinks.
Sugary drinks have an increasingly bad rap. A 2015 study by Researchers at Tufts University, published a study in the American Heart Association Journal Circulation, showed statistically that regular consumption contributes to an estimated 184,000 deaths each year from diabetes, heart disease and other obesity-related illnesses1.
Sugar-shy consumers are shying away from diet soda, too. Several recent studies have linked diet soda to cardiovascular disease and showed a correlation between cancer and aspartame.
Tap Water Isn't Safe Anymore
The bottled water explosion has also been propelled by growing public awareness around tap water contamination. It seems you can’t go more than a week it seems without hearing something bad about tap water in the news.
Our aging public supply systems and under-funded water departments can’t keep up with contamination issues. No one in Flint would argue that.
To punctuate this, the Natural Resources Defense Council, in 2000, estimated that 56 million Americans (across 25 states) drink water with unsafe levels of arsenic2. Arsenic is extremely difficult to remove from water and is a deadly toxin. The Environmental Working Group analyzed hexavalent chromium (of movie stardom in Erin Brokovich) in drinking water across the U.S. and found it in 31 out of the 35 cities sampled3.
Sadly, it seems that tap water quality will never get better. Only worse. And as it does, bottled water consumption inevitably rises.
The problem with bottled water is that some 45% of bottled water brands are sourced from the municipal water supply—the same source as what comes out of the tap, according to Peter Gleick, a scientist and author of “Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water.”
Bottled water is unregulated (unless crossing state lines) and so it often isn’t much cleaner. “The general public thinks bottled water is going to be safer and cleaner than tap water,” says Mae Wu of the National Resources Defense Council. “For the most part, that’s not true.”
A 2008 Environmental Working Group study revealed that 38 contaminants were found in 10 popular brands of bottled water. Each of the brands tested contained an average of eight chemicals, including: nitrate, industrial chemicals, arsenic, and bacteria4. A Goethe University/Frankfurt’s Department of Aquatic Ecotoxicology study of European bottled waters found a plethora of chemicals, including endocrine disrupting chemicals, which act like hormones in the body and have been linked to diabetes, breast cancer, and cardiovascular disease.
Plastic soda and water bottles clog our landfills and float as vast vortices on the world’s oceans. Of the 33.6 million tons of plastic discarded in the U.S. each year, only 6.5% of it is recycled according to Columbia University’s Earth Center. What happens to the rest? To add to the list of bottled water issues, bottled water also has a horrific carbon footprint.
Worst yet, consumers are being hoodwinked at the cash register. When you do the math, bottled water is up to 1,900 times more expensive than tap water.
Sadly, the largest problem with bottled water is that all of this is completely unnecessary. For a fraction of the cost of bottled water, consumers can (with advanced filtration products) use their own tap water to create clean and drinking healthy water.
Ultra Water Solutions spent over three years researching and developing our own UltraWater filter technology and designed it to dramatically improve the contaminant reduction. The aim was to create the cleanest, healthiest and best tasting water possible — at an affordable price.
The result is a full range of Ultra Water Solutions filtration products.
- Affordable
- Rigorously lab tested
- USA made
- Great tasting
- A full range of product options from pitchers to premium water ionizers
UltraWater products are capable of the most advanced contaminant removal while retaining the beneficial alkalizing minerals. UltraWater filtration has been extensively tested in NELAP/EPA certified third party labs to show stunning reductions of 249 contaminants.
Do something good for yourself. Good for the planet. Something you can believe in. Be a force in helping reverse the bottled water trend. Drop the bottle! Try an Ultra Water Solutions product and enjoy the cleanest, alkaline and ionized water possible.
References:
- Singh GM, Micha R, Khatibzadek S, Lim S, Ezzati M, and Mozaffarian, D. “Estimated global, regional, and national disease burdens related to sugar-sweetened beverage consumption in 2010.” Circulation. Published online ahead of print 06-29-15. doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.114.010636.
- “The Truth About Tap” NRDC, Andrew Postman, January 05, 2016.
- “Study finds probable carcinogen in tap water of 31 U.S. cities“ Washington Post, Lyndsey Layton, December 20, 2010.
- “Bottled Water Quality Investigation” Environmental Working Group, Olga Naidenko, PhD, Senior Scientist, October 15, 2008
