The story of bottled water (short film)
storyofstuff.org
storyofstuff.org
Dunno about where everybody else is, but this is at least true here, in Ireland. Maybe bottled water in the US is different? I don't know.
Until recently, when I got a water filter, I always drank bottled water. I love water and drink a LOT of it and always chose bottled water for taste. The really cheap bottled water usually tastes like crap, but the midrange to higher priced water tastes a lot better. Of the water sold locally, Volvic is my favourite. Tap water here tastes TERRIBLE. Even the filtered water I drink now doesn't taste as nice as bottled water and I'd still drink bottled water if it wasn't so expensive compared to buying filter replacements every now and then. There is a GIANT difference in taste between different brands of water. I don't know if its the water itself or the plastic it is packaged in[1].
Some of my friends think I'm crazy and can't taste the difference. I definitely can and I suspect the reason is that for the first fifteen or sixteen years of my life, I HATED all bottled water because it taste terrible compared to the tap water at home. I grew up in the country and the tap water came from a stream from the mountain at the back of the house. It was collected in a stone well and filtered through granite slabs. Thats it. No bottled water has come close to the taste of that water and until I moved to the city, I hated bottled water. I had friends who grew up in nearby towns and I never liked their tap water very much. But when I moved to the city, the tap water tastes extremely bad and I chose bottled water as the better of too bad options. I've since got used to bottled water, though drink it less due to getting a filter. So: mountain water > bottled water > filtered tap water > tap water
(Sadly the well has since been decomissioned due to contaminants (the mountain was used for farming and there are a lot of animals kept around where the well was) and while the water it has been replaced with is still nicer than town water and most bottled water, it is nowhere near as nice as the old water was)
[1] for example, recently I did a blind taste test with Milk, because I prefer to buy two brands (most shops only sell two or three brands. All shops sell at least one of the two brands I favor and often at least one other one. These others generally depend on the shop and region, some shops do have other brands I like, generally they are sold in tetrapak cartons, see below) of Milk due to taste. I could not taste the difference between tetrapak milk between the two brands that I buy, but I could between plastic cartons of the same two brands. With plastic, I could also taste the difference between the brands I buy and other brands. I am certain the taste difference is due to the plastic used in the cartons, not the Milk itself. I bet its the same for bottled water.
The reason I don't get too outraged is two-fold. One, it's better that people drink water instead of sugar water. Two, the landfilled bottles are annoying, but it's a problem we can solve later when we need the space. Right now, there is plenty of space on the planet for people, agriculture, and garbage. As we begin to need more space for people and agriculture, we will clean up the garbage.
I personally wouldn't buy bottled water, but this is not something I am losing a lot of sleep over either. Let the market work this problem out.
In college (now about 10 years ago) I did a blind taste test study for a statistics class project and my results agreed with what they said in the video. Most people, including my roommate who was the biggest bottled water drinker I knew preferred the tap water to bottled, and yet after he saw even his own results it changed nothing. I just don't get it.
And that's the point. Bottled water isn't being brought to the dining room. People are drinking it on the bus, during meetings, and walking down the street.
Besides, as first-post said: "let the market work this problem out". The girl in the video, herself, admitted that there was a reversing trend in the market. Problem...?
We could let market solve the problem if all people were intelligent and aware of biochemistry (at least when we're talking about food). This, however, is very rare.
Where I live (SFbay) it costs about 5 dollars (and a schlep down to the refill location) per month (~20 gallons) for a family of 3... and no wasted plastic or barrels of oil transporting the goods.
Best part is it tastes better than bottled or tap water, significantly.
Many folks are hyper-sensitized to the taste of a very small amount of mineral content that some water may or may not have. Bottled water manufacturers have latched onto these childish preferences and cultivate them in order to (very successfully) con people into paying for nothing and waste enormous energy and resources in the process.
Turn on the spigot, drink up, and don't fuss about it so much.