A Fashion Trend Meets a Watery Grave – take some to time to read this interesting Wall Street Journal opinion article about the demise of “fancy water” by Eric Felton.  

“For a little while, carrying a bottle of water was the very symbol of fashionable health-consciousness. But fashions change: Now bottled water is the eco-equivalent of last year’s frock. And so none other than the Environmental Working Group was on Capitol Hill last month mounting a full-throated campaign against the stuff. The thrust was that, hey, if you run tap water through a filter, it isn’t really so bad after all—and quite the bargain too!”

A recent post on FitSugar noted seven reasons why is makes sense to choose tap water over bottled water. Here is a clip from that list:

Sipping bottled water has become such a habit for people trying to live healthier – think Jennifer Aniston and her Smartwater ads. Choosing water over sugary sodas is great, but many people think bottled water is healthier than good ol’ water from the tap. And cleaner too. But research has found that is not true. In fact, bottled water could contain more impurities than tap water  that’s not smart at all. Here are seven reasons to skip the bottled water and opt for tap.

1. Tap water is highly regulated. It is regularly checked for traces of E. coli and fecal coliform bacteria. The FDA doesn’t hold the same rules for bottled water.
2. Tap water must be tested for coliform bacteria 100 or more times a month. Bottled water companies are only required to test once a week.

Reasons to Choose Tap Water Over Bottled [via FitSugar]

We all know bottled water is an environmental no-no because it generates plastic and because energy is required to ship it around, but is it any healthier?  Many people feel guilty about it, but want to make sure they’re not drinking a bunch of chemicals.

Sarah Schmidt from Mother Nature Network wrote a great response to this question in a recent post:

“There’s really no reason to think bottled water is healthier or more pure than tap. In fact, recent testing suggests that bottled water is, in the case of some brands, just tap water poured into plastic. Beverage companies aren’t required to disclose the origins of their water, or the results of any in-house testing they do for contaminants (except in California). That means that they can pretty much fill those resource-and-energy-hogging plastic bottles with any old H20, slap a picture of a mountain on it, and charge you an arm and a leg for it. The Environmental Working Group just tested 10 brands of bottled water and found everything from arsenic to chlorine to fertilizer residue in them. Some brands were completely indistinguishable from municipal supplies, and contained byproducts of the disinfectants used in tap water. Funny thing, that.

The bottled water industry, not surprisingly, contends that a study of 10 brands is not big enough to represent the market as a whole, but the fact is that there’s no law preventing companies from bottling ordinary tap water and selling it as something more special. Your tap water may be just as good as bottled water—and it’s literally 1,900 times cheaper on average. If you want to make sure you’re drinking the purest water possible, you’re better off investing in one of the dozens of kinds of filters on the market. And yeah, we know, sometimes you’re away from home, you’re thirsty, you forgot your trusty reusable bottle, and you find public drinking fountains more reprehensible than the thought of increasing your carbon footprint a smidgen. Sometimes it does make sense to go for that bottle of water. We won’t tell. No need for massive guilt trips. Just keep in mind that you’re only paying for convenience, not for exceptional purity of the water.”

[via MNN]