Bottled Water and Extreme Wastefulness
I recently passed a home near me that had a pile of plastic water bottles piled up by the curb. It got me thinking. I know they have well water, I can see the cap on their lawn. Where we live everyone has well water and it is some of the tastiest water I have ever had. So why did these people buy their water?
I could only think of a few reasons:
- Status symbols to impress others
- Careless with money
- Bought into the marketing and media hype
Years ago bottled water as we now know it didn't exist. Yes, there was seltzer and club soda. There was also legitimate spring water. However, most people drank water from the tap. Cities like New York touted the best tap water on the world.
Somewhere along the line, some genius decided to market bottled water and an industry was born. Most bottled water today is not spring water-- it is really just glorified tap water. Recently one big marketer had to admit just that. Imagine paying a buck or two to these hucksters for something that you can get for free.
While I do believe in filtering water, I drink tap water-- I try to avoid paying for water at all costs.
Save some money, look past the hype, and revisit the past-- have a glass of free water.
Categories: Money Savers, Frugality, Free Resources, Simple Living, Consumerism
Tags: Money Savers Simple Living Free Resources Frugal Frugality Consumerism
Another great idea.
Bottled water is such a scam. We pay far less for gasoline than we do bottled water. See how much a bottle of water costs and do the math yourself.
You'll probably find that bottled water is in the range of $16 a gallon. That's for the most common molecule on the face of the planet. It falls from the sky, it is pumped out of the ground, and if flows by in rivers and streams.
If you have great well water like we do, just refill those handy bottles with your own water. It's the only reasonable way to have good water at a price that you can appreciate.
I think lots of folks feel good about buying bottled water because it has an aura of being better because it costs money.
What a crock! Find yourself a drinking fountain.
Clair
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Don't keep refilling those handy bottles too often! They are not designed to withstand the high heat needed to sterilize them (they're meant to be recycled), so you risk the hazard of germ growth. Also, if you check the bottle, you should see an expiration date listed. That's not there to let you know the water is growing stale, or your soda is getting flat; that's there to let you know your recycleable plastic bottle is starting to degrade, as was intended, and you may experience contamination of the contents! So recycle those bottles (they can be used for stuffing for coats, tires, all sorts of things), and use a proper container that can be sterilized!
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You are absolutely right-- they shouldn't be used too often. Our rule is 4-5 times and then off to the recycle center. Actually, we are using purchased bottles of water less and less, and specially designed bottles instead. I keep a stainless steel one in my car.
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And while I'm all for well AND tap water, I did want to let you know that, historically, water HAS been privately sold at some really prices - much higher, in fact, than currently, because it was much harder to find CLEAN water. A lot of still-operating bottled water companies were established in the early and mid-19th centuries, when access to clean water in cities was hard to find.
Yes. I am a geek, and I enjoy television shows about The History Of Plumbing and The History of Water.
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I remember bottled water (Deer Park spring water) being solid in supermarkets as a kid-- as far back as 1970 by my memories, but somewhere along the way the marketers jumped in and turned it into a craze . . .
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Some of this water is even imported from places like Fiji or Iceland!
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Bottled water just got wasted in my house. One of the kids would open one, take a few sips and leave it out in the yard till Mom or Dad found it. I stopped buying it and now we use refillable sports type bottles for soccer games, car trips, etc. When I tried explaining to everyone that it was just costing too much and I didn't want to spend the money on it I got the old eyeball rolls and sarcasm about Mom being so cheap, blah, blah, blah. But when I told the kids that it was better for the environment if we didn't use so many plastic bottles they were all for "going green" and have adjusted to the new rules. Go figure! Now I use "the environment" rationale whenever I don't want to buy something I think is overpriced or just not needed. Hey, whatever works!
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