Bottled Water

[Caribeing]

Bottled water a right rip off what did we do before it was all designer bottled, we used the tap. Panorama programme exposed the
double standards, bottled water imported from
Fiji where the people don't have clean water
to drink Plastic bottles causing pollution,
has anyone in this country been ill from drinking tap water .

[Androcles]

Sadly, Mary T, it does happen, people being poisoned by British tap water- the Camelford water disaster was one example in 1988 and the effects are still being seen - see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles /news/news.html?in_article_id=502442&in_page_i d=1770

You should also look at this about cancer drugs being found in our tap water currently
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xm l=/earth/2008/01/13/eachems113.xml

And the man from the Bottled Water Suppliers pointed out the other day that the Government were only too pleased to see large supplies of bottled water available when the Water companies pumping stations were inundated by flood water last summer and unable to supply drinking water - so the argument is not as one sided as one is led to believe.

[hammerman]

Bottles of mineral water have become a fashion accessory. I saw a woman yesterday and it was so stereotypical of this accessory.....looked like she's just been to the gymn, lycra shrots on, designer sunglasses worn on TOP of the head, heads off to her red porche convertable, 1 litre bottle on unoped volvic in her hand.

[chazza]

Yes!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/12 98810.stm

Also, where my parents live, the water is sometimes brown coming out of the tap, even though it has been investigated many times and the system has been flushed etc.

I would only buy bottled water very occasionally but I can understand why other people buy it!

[georgiewhite]

I think tap water is great! I live in a hard-water area too which means the water is much better for me as there are more minerals in it. I don't usually trust bottled water myself as I don't know how long the water has been bottled for before being shipped out to the shops.. Likely to be months though!

[SeaJayPea]

This has all been a massively successful marketing con.

Camelford was indeed a disaster, but it was caused by a tanker driver putting chemicals in the wrong place - i.e. human error. It wasn't a fault in the purification systems at all.
Chazza's example goes back to 2001

The very fact that when there is a problem with tap water it makes the news is an indication that for 99.99% of the time the water companies get it right. And it's much, much cheaper, and hardly any carbon footprint. Right now, on a Wednesday afternoon in February there will be dozens of full-sized artics delivering this stuff. The number goes through the roof when it gets warm.

There was an article in The Observer a couple of weeks ago about this. It takes nine litres of water to make a bottle that can hold one titre. That way lies madness.

Just out of interest - it's been filtered through the Alps, or it's water that's been frozen in glaciers for hundreds of thousands of years - why does it have a best before date?

[chazza]

Isn't the best before date there because the plastic can react with the water? That's what we always believed