Why is it that Americans HAVE to drink from bottled water?

Many people simply don't know that tap water has to meet as stringent or more stringent contamination guidelines than bottled water. They also like the convenience of buying bottled water at the store.

People don't think about the energy used to bottle and transport that water either. They think they're doing a good thing by buying water instead of soda (which is true healthwise), but don't consider the environmental impact. In addition to the energy wasted transporting all that heavy bottled water, 70% of the bottles aren't recycled. So they're wasteful from cradle to grave.

It's so simple to fill up a reuseable water bottle and bring it with you. If you don't like the taste of your tap water then use a Britta or PUR water filter, and that should take care of it. You'll save tons of money, tons of greenhouse gas emissions, and tons of landfill space. Plus you'll be drinking cleaner water!

You know when I was a kid no one gave a thought to drinking tap water. If it was good then it's good now. The only reason people think tap water has a gross taste is because it contains a lot of minerals from the earth. If you continued to drink it you would not notice the taste after a little while. Boiling tap water is also stupid, your just wasting more energy. All the idiots in the world that drive around in gas guzzling SUVs, drinking only bottled water should have to pay for their abuse of the environment!

Also there is no excuse for not recycling!!!

Convenience is one big thing. People also don't think about the cost-difference between buying a case of water, which seems relatively cheap, to the extremely cheap prices of our tap water which is of excellent quality in most places in the states. It's comparing pennies to dollars, but people don't think about it. Then, there's the matter of the bottles, which I was horrified to hear of only a small percentage of these get recycled! I don't understand why people can't just pick up a Nalgene bottle or other reusable water bottle and refill it with the great water that pours out of their taps. If not that, get a UV-filtering system for the water and still get that water for far less!

People believe the hype and think of bottled water as "cleaner" or "better" than tap water, also, which is typically just not the case at all.

In order to sterilise tap water to remove possibly harmful bacteria, you would either have to distil it or at least keep it on the boil for more than 5 minutes. Both of these processes would use enough energy to damage the environment.

Unfortunately, boiling does not necessarily get rid of chemical pollutants which are the main things now making your tap water unfit to drink. These chemical pollutants are very often the residues of industrial processes which have been going on for the last 150 years. Over time such residues drain, or are washed down, to the water table and become part of many of our municipal water supplies.

Finding safe water supplies is going to be a major problem in the next 100 years, but we are still pumping out and dumping serious volumes of pollutants, as if tomorrow will never come.

Well, for a lot of people in this country and abroad - it won't.

1. Germophobia created by marketing: The bottled water industry, over the last 15 years of so, been successful in convincing a large portion of the population that the water from our taps contains imputities (germs, bacteria, soylent green, etc...). Of course, they are absolutely correct since the human race can not survive without germs and bacteria. The problem is the water in their bottles is (in virtally all cases) the same water we get from our faucets. We actually NEED the germs and bacteria to survive.

2. Water consumption for health: The public has been duped into believing the medical community says we should each drink at least 8 8-oz glasses of water a day. What the medical experts say is that we need an intake of 64 oz. of fluids daily (water, soda, tea, coffee, etc...). We do not need to carry around a couple plastic bottles of water.

Assuming a 16 oz bottle of Aquafina costs appox $1. 50, that bottled water you are drinking costs $12 per gallon (128 oz per gallon). Gee... can you figure out why the bottled water people want to keep us using their product? HUUUUUUGE profit margin!

Aquafina and Dasani are both just tap water. It's more of a convenience is why so many Americans consume it in this manner. They don't think about where that bottle will end up. Though there is one brand I buy at health food stores that isn't actually plastic, or you could buy a reusable container. But of course the latter would make too much sense.

I wonder that too... somewhere along the way, people got the idea that tap water bad to drink.

Personally, I have a reusable water bottle that I fill up at home and bring with me so that I'll have water throughout the day. If I am at a restaurant and I order water, I just ask for tap water.

Just Americans? Come on, the first personal water bottles I ever saw were Evian in Europe, very handy when traveling. That was in the 60s. Tap water here in Mexico is bad tasting and everybody drinks bottled water. We refill our small bottles.

I think convenience is a big reason why some Americans drink bottled water. I don't like generating waste, and I don't like having to pay for water. I bought a bottle of water awhile ago and refill it at drinking fountains when I'm in school.

It is just the yuppie thing to do. I only buy bottled water when I'm someplace that I can't get it any other way, but my sister and I have come up with a good way to recycle all plastic bottles. Unfortunately we don't have a recycle plant anywhere around, so we fill up the bottles and use them for our own landfill. We live out in the country, so we have ruts develop from the rain, so we put the bottles in the ruts cover with grass clippings, and let the rain cover them with dirt. Works really well and we don't throw any away to clog up the landfills.