Some of you may recall Carl telling us last year that Pepsi's Aquafina and Coke's DaSani were simply
NYC tap water marketed to look like bottled spring water. According to the Natural Resources Defense
Council, it gets worse:
Bottled water currently costs up to 10,000 times as much as tap water, 3 times as much as milk and
twice as much as gasoline. But, the NRDC study estimated that 40 percent of bottled water is in fact
tap water.
They also find a 1 in 3 chance that any of 103 brands tested contain levels of contamination,
including by arsenic and e.coli.
"The brand 'Spring Water' showed a picture of a lake surrounded by mountains. The water actually
came from a well in the middle of an industrial parking lot next to a hazardous waste site."
According to this site, the NRDC simply has it in for the bottled water business:
bottledwaterweb.comnw 041299.htmlOpen ↗
"The NRDC report's goals are clearly stated in their executive summary recommendations, "The
long-term solution to our water woes is to fix our tap water so it is safe for everyone, and tastes
and smells good". This will never happen. The astronomical costs, the deteriorating infrastructure
of the municipal systems and the reality that municipalities using antiquated technologies makes it
a pipe dream of the authors. Even if it were possible, does it make sense to attempt to raise tap
water quality to that of bottled water when we use less than ½ of one percent of tap water for
drinking while the rest is flushed down toilets, used for washing and irrigation?"
I drink a lot of noname bottled water, but 'pon reflection it would be cheaper to just boil tap
water and refrigerate it myself.
Donal Fagan