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Bravo!

I never got the bottled water thing -- so wrong for so many reasons -- and NYC tap water is so good -- so too in many other big East Coast cities.

The water here is not the best tasting, but a Pur on our faucet does the trick! They have a 2 stage and a 3 stage filter (or is it 3 and 4 stage), but if your water isn't the best tasting in the world, try the more expensive 3 stage (or 4 stage- whichever is the higher stage) filter. It really does a good job at improving the taste of the water.

I've always called bottled water "gasoline water" because of the petroleum used to make the bottle and transport it. The key to drinking tap water is to make sure it's very cold.

I find it interesting that this article is surrounded by ads for bottled water delivery!

I couldn't agree more. One of my concerns is with the health of the pipes though. Big cities have their fair share of old pipes and negligent landlords. In addition, many people favor a softer water for drinking. In Chicago the water hardness is way up there. I'm trying to find a water filter that can go inside my sink cabinet but don't want an extra tap. Not sure if that's possible with home filtration units.

i don't see any ads for bottled water ....

There's been a lot of talk about bottled water lately and it's negative impact on the environment. In particular, last weekend the New York Times magazine had a great article about the 5 cent redemption on bottles and about the effort to include bottled water in that program (and the effort to update the program).

I try to only use my mug at work for water or tea, and to take my water bottle to the gym/beach/out.

Good for you for kicking the habit.

good for you! the best thing about bottled water, really is the bottle. i usually buy a bottle of water at work and then refill it all week long from the tap. i haven't invested in a nalgene because i'm scatterbrained and always end up leaving it somewhere.

Trend-setting restaurants? Maybe in the NYC bubble.

Here in St. Louis, the vast majority of restaurants never switched to bottled.

We only use bottled for the the portability of it, where we would have otherwise have had to bring canned soda, juice, etc.

For those concerned about the level of chlorine or flouride in tap water, a filter is great. But a warning- those reverse osmosis filters use TONS of water- very inefficient. And lots of filters only remove the smell of chemicals, not the actual chemicals!

And of course, there's a debate about nagalene bottles leaching into water, and the germs in the throw-away plastic ones if you refill! Yikes, isn't it a bummer that there's a hidden cost to just about everything?

Nice article and promising trend, but there's really no difference between "house-made sparkling water" and the soda water that you can get from the fountain-drink machine at any chain restaurant.

I've never heard of Nalgenes having problems with leaching into water, we use Nalgene products in the lab I work in and that would seem counterproductive for them to make stuff that leaches chemicals when they were originally made for lab use. I love my Nalgenes and they are easy to refill and dishwasher safe so until I see some concrete evidence that they are bad I am sticking with 'em.

That, and we've got an under-sink water filter that just is attached to our cold water so we don't need a separate tap - the cold tap water just comes out filtered. Nice for making tea and juice too.

I don't think there's been any conclusive consensus on this issue...

You can google "nalgene safety" and see a variety of articles about the chemicals that may be leached into water.

Some are written by the plastics industry...the others are written by the green-consumer sites...so opinions differ.

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200311/lol5.asp

At the bottom of this article, they list *safer* plastics to look for...

In general, I've heard that the PET plastic that water is usually sold in...does break down after time. So storing cases of water for a long time (how long is long, i do not know) may not be good.

As for Nalgene - somewhere I read that there may be a difference in the formulation of clear vs colored bottles. And that use of detergents etc may make them more susceptible to leaching.

i have a metal water bottle from greenfeet.com it's cool. tasted funny the first couple times i used it but it's supposed to be healthy.

I've got a Nalgene that I use like crazy, only to find out recently that another of their products is a device to restrain rabbits in testing labs. I almost wish that I didn't know this. I'll keep using the bottle though, till it wears out because now that I've got it, it would feel too wasteful to toss it.

I've got a friend who uses glass mason jars and stitched a sturdy cozy for it to prevent against breakage. She's never had a problem yet and it's probably a route I'll go soonish.

Nalgenes can be used to decant water out of with no use for washing. The key is to not put your lips to it (or straw) and to occasionally let it air dry.

Me- I like ceramic coffee cups.

Most tap water tastes fine if it's kept in a pitcher in the fridge. What we think is an "off taste" may actually be an "off smell". Letting the water sit lets the gases, or whatever, evaporate.

I've encountered more bad-tasting bottled water than tap water. Aquafina and Deja Blue are HORRIBLE.

And Chicago water is not hard water. Hard water is what you get downstate a little ways......crusty lime all over your sinks, water kettles. Laundry detergent and shampoo don't even get sudsy unless you use A LOT. I grew up in Chicago.....very good tap water.

Pittsburgh tap water is the best I've ever had. It tastes clean and crisp like Dasani (which is filtered tap water with minerals added).

Now, I don't drink bottled water (mostly because I would just rather drink tapwater), but I think that this discussion is a little ridiculous. However, I would like to commend the writers of the article for actually giving us details about the extent to which bottled water can be said to contribute carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Usually you just get rants that say that local food must contribute less, but I don't necessarily think that is the case when you account for how efficient it is to ship large volumes of goods.

As an example, lets see how much of an impact bottled water has. We only know from the article that all the water imported from Italy, France and Fiji accounts for 4000 tons of carbon Of course, that is a small part of the bottled water market, let's say 10% and call the total output 40000 tons. That's certainly a large amount, but if you change it to a per capita basis (assuming a population of 300 million) you get .26 pounds of carbon dioxide per person per year or to put it into behavioral changes it is an average car driving 1/35th of a mile (I am basing that number off the article's assertion that 4000 tons is the yearly output of 700 cars and I am assuming that an average car goes 12000 miles in a year). Even if you want to quibble with the percentage of the water market that those countries represent, it is a truly negligible amount.

It is clear that if someone does want to have an impact on the environment, that simply eliminating bottled water is not going to have much of an impact. In fact, it is probably just posing.

Admittedly, there is also the packaging issue, but as the article notes, industries have grown up around using recycled plastic bottles so I don't necessarily think that there is a ironclad case against using bottled water from an environmentalist perspective.

When I had lunch at Boulette's Larder in SF they were pouring drinking water from a pitcher and had loose pieces of Japanese charcoal at the bottom. I would like to know if that has an affect on the water.

I do occasionally buy a case of Deer Park, Aquafina or Dasani water but mostly I just keep refilling my Brita with tap water and it's delish! We have the large rectangle container with the tap on the front, which sits on the fridge shelf, rather than the pitcher. We used to have the pitcher but I found that I had to refill it too often which bugged me, so we got the bigger container with the tap. It is great because you never have to lift it, either to dispense the water OR to refill it. Very nice.

Over in Seattle, tap water is tasty. I have a water bottle at the office (provided by the company, with logo) but lately I've just been getting up and refilling a glass tumbler. Yes, this means I get up from my desk more often. I also feel more awake, so perhaps it's helping my circulation or something :)

The one thing I do like pre-bottled water for is in my car. I keep a 6-pack in the trunk along with beef jerky and a few bottles of Gatorade. It does come in handy when stuck in traffic and for yoga.

Because I grew up in the Philippines, I got used to drinking bottled water everywhere I went. So when I moved to London, I suffered as I lugged huge bottles of water up to my apartment until I realized how silly I was being! I saved myself tons of money on the bottled water, and a broken elbow from carrying all that weight from the supermarket to my flat!

London water is pants though! Really, really poor.

- In a privileged western society, kind of way, obviously

Presumably the people who are drinking bottled water are also the same people who are eating environmentally friendlier organic food and who therefore might have an awareness of waste and excess in our society.
Have they not thought of the wastefulness of the plastic bottles, the fuel it takes to bring water from far away, and the possible chemicals leaching from the plastic bottles?
Where I live we have, from our local mountains, soft water with which we liberally sprinkle our lawns, wash our cars, and launder our clothes. And yet roaring around our city delivering bottled water are smelly, environmentally unfriendly diesel trucks!
Hurray for tap water!

Finally!