If youíre like many people, you may have thought that those fancy bottles of water you buy in the store come from pristine streams or natural aquifers.

Itís a reasonable assumption, given the names of the companies that make them ó names like ìIce Springî and ìCrystal River.î

If youíve thought this, you might be surprised to learn that actually, many of these botteld water sources come straight from municipal water sources.

In other words, theyíre tap water.

Now this isnít true of all bottled water, but it is true of a large number of them ó 25 percent of the bottled waters sold in the U.S.

Furthermore, the two largest bottled water companies in the county, Aquafina and Dasanti (owned by PepsiCo and Coca Cola, respectively), are just filtered tap water.

In July, PepsiCo announced it would start labeling its Aquafina bottles with new labels that spell out the truth: ìpublic water source.î

While this is a positive step, we think it is worth considering whether the value of easy access to what is, essentially, a plastic bottle of tap water, is really worth the costs.

Last year, Americans drank 8.25 billion gallons of bottled water. Only about a fourth of those bottles got recycled, leaving 2 billion pounds of plastic water bottles to go into landfills.

Furthermore, while it is understandable that many perceive bottled water as healthier than tap water, recent studies have shown that there is no discernable health benefit to the bottled water.

Whatís more, the plastic in water bottles can leak toxic chemicals such as Bisphenol A and phthalates into the water. This is why bottled water typically has expiration dates.†

If you really care about your health and the environment, the best thing you can do is plan ahead. Get a reusable glass or hard plastic bottle and refill it with filtered water from home.
It just makes more sense than paying two dollars for a plastic bottle you wonít use again and 12 ounces of tap water.