It's the water

(Hat tip: Safedrinkingwater.com news e-mail)

The Polaris Institute (who?) weighs in with a book on bottled water.

Inside the Bottle provides a vivid and disturbing portrayal of how four big companies Nestlé, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Danone --- dominate the bottled water industry today. It examines key issues of public concern about their operations, including how they:

• pay little or next to nothing for the water they take from rural springs or public water systems;
• turn ‘water’ into ‘water’ through elaborate treatment processes; produce a product that is not necessarily safer than, nor as regulated as, tap water;
• package it in plastic bottles made of toxic chemicals that are environmentally destructive;
• market it to an unsuspecting public as ‘pure, healthy, safe drinking water.’
• sell it at prices that are hundreds and even thousands of times more costly than ordinary tap water.

I confess to a mild irritation at the number of people who will announce, "I never drink the tap water," or "Ewww! City water!" and suck down gallons of water from a bottle. The fact is, with very few exceptions, municipal water is regulated more tightly than bottled water is. Although the big companies clean their water to a fare-thee-well with reverse-osmosis and put in their own blend of minerals for flavor, a company can take tap water, heat treat it to sterilize it, bottle it. If you're buying bottled water for any reason other than taste and convenience, you're wasting your money.