Bottled water

[Gordon]

I work in a hotel, and I get a fair number of requests from guests who want water at some odd hour. When I tell them to take their cup into their bathroom and turn on the faucet they seem mystified. They would prefer me to bring them a $4.00 bottle of unknown origin water, than to self-service themselves to free, and quite healthy public water.

I can appreciate the fact that some municipalities may have sub-standard drinking water, but it just cracks me up when guests at the hotel here ask me for bottled water. I tell them their best option, and they seem to look at me like I have three heads.

I drink my home tap water every day, and I haven't died yet.

What is your feeling about this?

 

[naturestee]

Well, after having been to Indianapolis which has the world's most awful tasting water, I understand. Seriously, it tastes like rotten dirt. You might be used to your tap water, but it might taste very different to them compared to what they are used to. Fortunately our hotel had a water bottle machine next to the soda machine. It was overpriced, but I couldn't choke down my meds with the awful water there.

 

[Gordon]

The bottled water thing just puzzles me since I grew up with tap water in a container in the refrigerator, in the 70's.

Louisville, Kentucky's municipal water supply has actually been rated as one of the best in the U.S.

Since I drink water from the faucet everyday here, it just makes me pause and wonder why people would question the normal water.

 

[MyBabyBunnies]

A lot of people are like that when they travel. If you don't travel far very much, you don't realise how the taste of water varies. Also there is a big difference in taste of soft water versus hard water. While I have no problem drinking tap water at home, I can't stand to drink it anywhere else. We actually take containers of our own water when we go on vacation. But if I can't have water from home, I'll drink bottled water (I've yet to find a difference in bottle water taste). Also think of the chemicals in tap water -- there are so many chemicals in it. Bottled water and filtered water tend to have a lot of these removed.

Over the last 10 years there have been a number of tap water contamination scares, which may also affect people's willingness to drink it, especially in a strange place.

So really there are a lot of reasons for people wanting bottled water.

 

[Gordon]

Babybunnies, you made a good point about taste, but bottled waters are less regulated than tap water, so you really don't know what you're getting.

 

[Michaela]

I wouldn't drink water from my tap, there is nothing wrong with it all, but when you are used to spring water (we know someone who had a supply of spring water and they give it to us for free) it's hard to go back.

It's true that water tastes very different where ever you go - Coca Cola will taste different in different countries toobecause they use local water supplies.

 

[MyBabyBunnies]

Gordon wrote:

But bottled waters are less regulated than tap water, so you really don't know what you're getting.

That may be true,I don't know but how many bottled water scares have you ever heard of? Personally I can't say of any and I've heard of about 5 tap water scares that I remember (and I'm only 19). So that alone would give you the impression that it's safe.

 

[Gordon]

BabyBunnies,

No, I don't know anything statistically about drinking water. Alll I'm saying is, I grew up in the 1970's, when the bottled water industry was barely wet.

I just think too many people nowadays think water is something you get out of a bottle, and those are same people who ask for their gas-guzzling cars to be parked.

 

[Bunnys_rule63]

My parents buy ridiculous amounts of bottled water because they wont drink tap water - I always tell them off for the amount of plastic waste they must produce!I can understand drinking bottled water if your local water is horrible (I always think water in Europe smells like rotten eggs:yuck), but our water tastes pretty nice!

 

[nermal71]

We do not drink our water. I take a 5 gallon water bottle to a filter machine and get it from there. The reason is our water is sooo chlorinated. The city we live in claims it is safe. But just out of curiosity one day I took a test strip from the pool to test our water and it tested it at the safe low level for a swimming pool. I don't know about you but after being told asa child to not drink the water in the pool by my mom I just can't drink water that tests the same level of chlorine as our pool. To tell you how bad it is if you fill the bathtub with hot water it smells like a hot tub. So I'll take my chances with the bottled water. We do like I said though refill the big bottles, put them in a tank dispenser to try and save on waste.

 

[cmh9023]

I think it depends on where you are too. When I was growing up we had great tap water, but when we went to my Grandma's town that was only 1/2 hour away it was awful. We would bring her gallon jugs full of our water.

Where I live now there was a big sewer project several years ago that didn't go well, I guess. So now, whenever it rains a lot (like it has been), they have to dump raw sewage into the lake which then goes into our water supply.There are always reports on the news saying exactly how many gallons were dumped.The logical part of me knows that it goes through the filtering system, but still, I just can't get past knowing X number of gallons were dumped...yuck. About 10 or 12 years ago we had an outbreak of cryptosporidium (sp?) from the water. My roommate got sick, and I mean REALLY sick. Since I saw how sick he was I've always been skeptical. People even died from it if they had compromised immune systems.

That said, I can definitely remember the times when they didn't even make individual bottles of water. Like someone said, that would have been considered the weirdest thing. Haha...makes me feel so old!

 

[tundrakatiebean]

My mom has a flat of bottled water in the house at all times so that we can grab some to take with wherever that we know won't leak. We also have the in fridge water thing with an extra filter. The water here is pretty good. In Lake Oswego (where I used to live) the water either tasted like chlorine or dirt, there was no inbetween and it was absolutely foul. We bought one of those filter pitchers and kept it in the fridge.