Purified Tap Water Is Better For The Environment

The world, and the U.S. in particular, has a strange obsession with bottled water. Many of us buy it daily, and some of us wouldn’t dare drink from our own faucet, even though we can get it for free! It’s so bad that the term “tap water” is almost synonymous with “bad water.” While it’s true that bottled water is, for the most part, put through multiple purification and filtration processes, it isn’t much different from the water that is fed right into your home. In fact, the water that goes into water bottles basically comes from the same sources as your tap water, which is also treated and filtered before it reaches your home.

The vast majority of people who buy and consume bottled water do so because they believe it is healthier than pretty much any tap water. This is also false. In fact, bottled water can often be more unhealthy than tap water, as plastic will be absorbed into the water over time, which can cause a myriad of health issues including reproductive problems and even cancer.

While bottled water may seem attractive and reassuring to someone who wants to make sure they are putting healthy stuff into their bodies (we don’t blame you), it also has a very negative effect on the environment, which many people don’t think about. The plastic that is used, and then thrown away, to make the literally 50 billion water bottles consumed every year has an environmental impact that affects the ocean, the fish in the ocean, and the water we then drink.

You may be thinking, “But we recycle!” This is true. Water bottles are made of recyclable polyethylene terephthalate plastic, or PET. However, 80% of this plastic still ends up in landfills, or in the ocean, which has over 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in every square mile. That adds up to about 38 billion water bottles every year, or around $1 billion worth of materials.

Additionally, the resources that go into making these plastic bottles are hurting the environment just as much, if not more. 17 million barrels of oil go into the manufacturing of water bottles every year, including the energy used to pump, process, transport, and refrigerate this water adds up to over 50 million barrels. These are resources that could be going pretty much anywhere else, rather than to something that we can get for free in our homes.

If you’re still worried about your water consumption, bottled water isn’t the only alternative to tap water. You can filter and purify tap water right at home. It may seem like a pricey endeavor, but you will more than break even with the money you will be saving by not buying bottled water every day/month. Not only does this immeasurably help the environment, but it is also a much better quality of water than most bottled water can boast. The K5 drinking water system, for example, has up to five stages of filtration, protects against many different contaminants, and doesn’t rely on putting chemicals into the water in order to purify it (which many water sources do). If you’re buying water bottles every day, you’re better off (healthily, financially, and environmentally) buying a water purification system for your home.