Science and Society

Bottled water is a hoax. Must of the folks in the USA have perfectly acceptable tap water! Just draw it from the kitchen tap into a store bought plastic container, which can be re-used!

Bottled water will be named as the greatest marketing scam of the century.....perfectly brilliant, but people are idiots.

There is an appropriate time to use bottled water - When I am out & purchasing something out of a vending machice, I will often purchase bottled water, since I don't want soda. Drinking bottled water at home is ridiculous.

I use brita at home because my tap water tastes like crap. I bring bottled water to work because the pipes are 70yrs old and the fountains are in dirty production areas. Reusing containers is not recomended because of mold and bacteria growth even when washed regulary. Bottled water is here to stay it's clean and convienent. We even keep a couple extra cases in the basemetn just in case.

The forerunner in bottled water 'Evian' read it backwards... 'Naive'.

Remember Jack Nicholson in The Shining, REDRUM, REDRUM.... backwards = MURDER.

Turn on your taps.....

Bottled water is a scam. It has become one of the biggest points of contention between my wife and I. She argues that it's "just better". I think it's just marketing folks making us look more foolish then usual. Buy a squirt bottle fill it from the tap and move on! If you must have your bottled water because it taste better, then order it by the 5gal recycleable bottles and have it delivered. I have traveled the world and seen 1st hand the waste these billions of bottles have created. Some small eco focused islands have banned them.

Where I lived a few years ago, we had a meeting with the company that ran the local water service, and some twit from the state, about complaints concerning the water. This twit actually said, and I quote:
"You may not like the taste of the tap water, and you may not like the color, but it is perfectly safe to drink..."

We had to explain to this nitwit that water ISN'T SUPPOSED TO HAVE A COLOR!

Anyone using Filters replaced them every couple of weeks. What if you don't like the taste of chlorine? What if you don't like flouride in unknown concentrations?

Don't like Bottled Water? DON"T DRINK IT. Leave the rest of us ALONE.

i don't care if bottle water is a scam. i prefer it to soda and juice. it's good for you. why make it more difficult to do something good? tax the soda people for all ther garbage and extra pounds.

I drink bottled water, and lots of it. Growing up in the mid-west on well water I drank it from the tap. Moving to SoCal where the water taste is horrid, I quit drinking water altogether. My daughter, born 6 years after moving here, finally talked me into trying bottled water in her teens. I am hooked. So, it is either bottled or nothing. I plan to stay on the bottled stuff, it is far healthier than no water in the old system. Also cheaper than in equal amounts to the Coca Cola I drink otherwise. I really don't care what others think or do, this is my deal and I pay for it, not anyone else.

Here's where our useless politicians could actually take action and make a strong environmental statement: TAX THE H**L OUT OF BOTTLED WATER!

They have conducted taste tests in Montreal (2-million people city in Canada) between tap water and 5 brand name bottled waters, all in the same shape container. Guess what? Tap water came in 2nd, the most expensive bottled water 4th...

BTW: Most bottled (spring)waters contain more bacteria than tap water because they do not use chlorine to kill it, they just filter out particle contaminants...

One trick to have tap water taste better: Put it in a container and leave it in the fridge overnight. The taste of chlorine used in purification will be gone.

Yeah! Great idea banning bottled water! I'll just go and have a Coke!

The Liberal nanny state has no boundaries. I increasingly think it is time for another revolution. We can put all the liberals on one side of the country. There they can ban all energy production to save the environment, ban all bottled water, leave their border wide open to Mexico and sit in the dark smoking pot while the Mexican government fights with the jihadist to see who can rule liberal land.

There is significant evidence that the plastic used in bottled water and bottled pop can be linked to the maturation of cancer. Although it is not a significant risk, it does warrent the use of caution when buying such products. By the way, with all the complaining about the price of gas, you'd think people would complain about having to pay for water.

As long as people know what they are getting it cannot becalled a scam. Some bottle water comes wsith extras added like calcium and vitamins.

A person my age can use these extras.

I live in an unincorporated area in the midwest and have nasty tasting/smelling well water. I used to be fine with it, but over the years decided it was probably risky to drink it regularly since it is not treated the way city water is. I do drink it in small quantities, but mostly have replaced it with bottled water (purchased by the gallon). I do not buy individual bottles very often, but jugs for use at home, which I began because no one who visited wanted to drink the well water. I don't think it's fair to put a tax on all bottled water, as for some of us the only alternative is well water from an personal well. Taxing the individual bottles might be okay in order to minimize its use at home by those with perfectly fine tap water.

I just wanted to let you all know that Corporate Accountability International is running the Think Outside The Bottle campaign, which is designed to curb bottled water and get people to support public water.

I'm amazed at the people who're saying "who cares about the environement or the cost of bottled water! we like it!"

typical american mindset (and yes, i am born and bred american).

if you can't sell ice to eskimos, why would anyone pay for something you can get for free?
And if you must make bottled water at least send it to people who don't have clean running tap water.

If the water coming from your tap tastes bad, filter it! The selection of water filters available from any home retailer range from refillable containers, typically under $20, to reverse-osmosis systems costing a few hundred dollars.

Maybe bottled water should only be available in ares in great quantities where it's needed, like where people posted that the water tastes really bad, is discolored, etc. The water here at my house is fine, but when I worked downtown, it was nasty, and we had bottled water. My in-laws have nasty tasting well water that I don't even want to brush my teeth with or bathe in. They have to have bottled water. As for "Oh, I'll just drink a sugary soda instead, that will teach you"... Restaurants and vending machines should have healthier alternatives. Sugar free sodas, at least, not that they're that great for you, anyway. Juices with no added sugar, iced tea, etc. I try to avoid caffeine after mid-day, but if I'm going out to eat, it's water or sugar/caffeine-filled drinks. How about mandatory recycling? My mom lives in a suburb where it is mandatory; the city even provided the containers to put your stuff in. Where I live, I try to recycle, but the garbage collectors don't even pick up the stuff I put out half the time, and it's collected every other week: cans/bottles/glass one week, cardboard/paper the next week...I run out of room.