New research now shows that most plastic bottled water is in most cases just filtered water from public water supplies. The research also exposes predatory plastic bottled water marketing tactics and how the bottled water industry negatively impacts people and the environment.
Industry marketing and false advertising from corporations like Nestlè means that more people are buying bottled water than ever — even though about 64 percent of the bottled water comes from public water systems. This means that people buying plastic bottled water are paying much, much more than they would for that same water from their own kitchen tap. In fact, bottled water is about 2,000 times more expensive than tap water.
The production of plastic bottled water is also harming the environment and particularly our oceans at an alarming rate, with about 70 per cent of plastic water bottles going unrecycled in 2015 alone. They ended up as litter, in landfill or in the oceans.
To make the problem worse, it is probably less safe drinking water from a plastic bottle than it is from your own kitchen tap. Single-serve bottled water is commonly packaged in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, which contains compounds such as benzene, toluene and xylene. Plastic bottles can in fact leach toxins like acetaldehyde, antimony and formaldehyde into the water in the bottle. (Acetaldehyde is a possible human carcinogen that can cause genetic mutations, and formaldehyde can cause DNA and chromosome damage).
The good news is that most households in Ireland can have a constant supply of pure healthy drinking water from their own tap or faucet and at a substantially lower cost than bottled water, simply by installing a quality home water filtration system. Read more..
