If you believe the marketing hype, you might look at your bottled water label and decide it comes from a pristine private spring or a glacier in the land of polar bears. Guess what. The water in those bottles could just as easily be filtered tap water from the next state over. Those kind of marketing fibs are the inspiration for Tappening’s latest campaign on bottled water lies.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) recently released their Bottled Water Scorecard. Even though EWG says you pay 1900 times more for H2O in bottles than for tap, what you’re actually getting may not be worth the hit your pocketbook or the planet takes every time you go for bottled.

EWG brings to light the fact that municipal tap water must disclose the source and quality of tap water. Do a Google search to find your local water utility’s web site and you’ll find info about where it comes from and any chemical pollutants that remain after treatment. But the same isn’t true for bottled.

Ozarka Drinking Water and Penta Ultra-Purified Water are the only two waters that disclose their source and treatment methods on the label along with water quality reports on their web sites. Only 18% of bottled waters disclose water quality reports with contaiminent testing results. Click here to read more

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It’s no secret that bottled water is bad for the earth. In 2006, the equivalent of 2 billion half liter bottles were shipped to the US to support our bad habit, creating thousands of tons of global warming pollution, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). While reusable water bottles are becoming more and more popular, the convenience of bottled water still wins at outdoor events and open air concert venues. Some music festivals, like last month’s Bonnaroo weekend in Tennessee banned bottled water. But then the question arises, how do you provide drinking water? The city of Toronto has come up with a sustainable solution: a mobile water trailer called HTO to Go.

Like water wagons of the past, this water fountain on wheels brings water en masse to areas where the H2O isn’t flowing. HTO to Go arrives at a venue and usually hooks up to a nearby water main. The refridgerated trailer is equipped with ten taps for drinking, ten taps for filling up resuable water bottles and even two automatically-refilling doggy bowls at the back.

Vancouver is contemplating a similiar service. Click here to read more

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A lot of greenies have beef with bottled water, and rightfully so. Over 25 million plastic water bottles get tossed every day, only 20 percent are recycled. What’s more, 47 million gallons of oil are needed to every year to produce all that plastic. Are the carbon cost of shipping it from across the country or across the world from places like Fiji is unnecessary. But despite the eco costs, many still buy bottled for its convenience.

Bottling your own tap water just got easier though thanks to Reduce’s WaterWeek. The set of five 16-ounce BPA-free bottles come with a handy holder to keep the organized in your fridge so you can easily take one every morning on your way out the door. We have great tasting tap water that’s readily available and free. If you buy a bottle of water every day, that adds up to about $500 a year. If you grab a WaterWeek bottle every day, you can drink for free. They also come in kid sizes so you can keep your little ones hydrated on the go, too. Click here to read more

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The problems with drinking bottled water seem endless these days from the high cost to your bank account to the high carbon cost of transporting, cooling and manufacturing the plastic bottles, not to mention the potential health risks that have been in the news recently surrounding the possibility of contaminants and the leaching of chemicals from plastic bottles. So what’s a water drinker to do? Buy a refillable bottle like those made by SIGG of course.

But what if said water drinker has high-maintenance taste and prefers not to drink plain old tap? EcoUsable came up with a smart solution by creating a refillable bottle that has a filter included. The EcoUsable 25 oz Filtered Water Bottle looks like a regular old stainless steel bottle form the outside, but inside lies a carbon filtration system that’s connected to the sport top. This way, every drop of water has to run through the filter before it enters your mouth. Click here to read more

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The craze of bottled water is a national obsession, but tap water in the U.S. is usually safer, and often better tasting too. This hilarious Penn & Teller video tells you what you really get with bottled water.

Instead of buying bottled water, please invest in a reusable water bottle.  Learn more about reusable water bottles by reading our SIGG Buyer’s Guide and our Disposable vs Reusable Water Bottle Face-off.

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