The truth about bottled water

Im not sure what happened---but there's black around 6 mins into this---are the bites that follow just the ones you didnt include?

Lot's of potential here, and a very important story. It seems a bit long and part of the video seems to be missing. Some of the camera work is shaky, how about using some "B" footage of a municipal water plant or something during some of the talking? I thought Matt's parts were some of the weakest and could probably be cut out.

With a little more TLC, I think you'd have something TV worthy. The story is ready now, but the video needs some tweaking (I think).

I believe that bottled water is the most ridiculous concept. On top of that, nowadays, especially in high school and college, bottled water has trends. I look left and right, and Fiji, Dasani, and Poland Spring all sit in girl's purses and in the opposite hand of the Starbucks coffee cup. It's pathetic that people are convinced of the quality of bottled water and supposed vast difference from tap water.

You've done an excellent job of covering this aspect of the story. Thanks for informing, educating, and telling the story. Well stated. Its important to tell this story.
danielmklopp~

Hasn't Dennis Miller been doing jokes about bottled water since 1987? Seriouslythis one was long overdue for the change in attitude. College campuses, you have a task before you that demands your scorn, your disbelief that you've been douped.

Think about how low tech a jugs have been for thousands of years. That's what a bottle of water is, and how silly it is to buy a brand new version of something that kept working after it was empty? And you see a solution.

I assure you, condemning the bottle as "so last week" will work. Getting the keen new stuff always works when you see it in the historical sense.

May the fads deliver us,
Amen.

it's ironic that americans waste their money on bottled water when tap water is perfectly fine and africans drink contaminated water because they can't afford anything else. here's an idea that i am going to implement in my life effective immediately. the next time you think to buy bottled water, drink tap water instead and then donate the money you would have spent to an organization helping to clean up the world's water supply, such as:

http://www.africanwellfund.org/

THANK YOU for this. Americans spent 15 billion dollars on bottled water last year alone. This should be on tv. People need to know. Everyone I talk to about this believes bottled water is indeed from some spring in the mountains and is absolutely pure. It's good to see so many people finally waking up to this grand deception.

I'll admit that I'm guilty of buying a bottle of water now and then when I'm on the run. But what we need to do is move into a reusable model where you bring in your own water container/bottle that can be refilled at convenience stores and gas stations, etc, for a nominal fee. Or even for free using the water tap on soda fountains.

At home I use 5 gallon returnable water bottles in a water cooler. I see nothing wrong with that (other than paying $1/gallon for water, which is my choice), and the same idea could be implemented outside the home with some thought.

And for what it's worth, it's much better than the water from my tap -- and my tap water isn't nearly as bad as it is in many other areas around the country. (And I LOVE the instant-hot water from it ;) )

The only other issue I can think of is that tap water is fluorinated and bottled water isn't, so that could lead to more dental problems down the line I suppose. But that's better than all the chlorine and other metals I can taste in tap water.

As for the video, I think it's fine -- the message is more important than the production. Sure it could be tightened up -- and that black space removed (there is some content at the end)... but all in all, thanks for bringing up this important issue!

Very interesting, thank you for covering this. I certainly do not want to see the privatization of water...

Im sure they don't just drop municapal water into Auquafina. It is filtered using reverse osmosis.
The best way to filter water. Muinicipal water has floride in it. Floride collects in your body like plaque. It's a poison

We buy bottled. It's delivered. We like it. We feel it's better than the tap. Our tap smells funny, it turns our toilets brown even though I clean them 3 times a week - which some people consider excessive, and my sister has had 4 kidney stones since moving to her new house in a very country area and the DR. tells her it's the water. Some places have it better than others, but don't tell me that bottled is all crap. Maybe some but not all. We're happy with our 5g bottled water.

Personally, I typically get a bottle of water about once every month or so and just reuse it over and over again until the plastic gets weak. I definitely agree that it should be boycotted though; the amount of pollution and resources it consumes is heinous.

You're right Abby, we should boycott bottled water and use cups, but we should use real cups, not plastic.

I gave this POD the "I LIKE IT", since any tweaking it needs before airing shouldn't be that hard to do.

Drinking tap water is much better than bottled water. If you think bottled water taste better, than you probably need to change your filter (or get one). Don't forget to filter all the water to your house, because you don't want to shower in chlorine water either.

I want to upgrade to reverse osmosis filtration for my drinking water when I can afford the unit. I'll probably just keep the regular filter on the whole house supply.

Keep water public, oppose privatization when ever you get the chance.

i know... i'm guilty of plastic cup use today. but i do reuse reuse reuse until it becomes unhealthy. :o)

The only time I drank bottled water as a habit was on my two week holiday to Florida. I think there was something up with the tap water there, as it tasted horrible. I could have used a filter, bur where I live (Norfolk, England) the water tastes good straight from the tap, so I don't own a filter, and buying a filter for two weeks, which I probably wouldn't even be able to take home would have been wasteful.

The water in every place we go to stinks. It's filthy! Every home and business should have a water distillation system to make the water safe and fit to drink. Connecting your tap to a municipal water piston would deliver pure water to you, but this idea has been strongly resisted by "fellows of the baser sort" for many years.

"Boycott bottled water; use cups - that's what they're there for" --abbym0308

...as you hold up a plastic disposable cup! lol

Glad you reuse them at least ;)

My brother used to work at the Pepsi Bottling Co. in Mankato, MN. He was allowed to drink any of their products from their line for free. He wasn't allowed to however to drink the Aquafina water until it was a day old because of a certain chemical in it. If he was to drink it it would've caused a lot of stomach problems and chronic vomiting-- Mmm sounds nice and fresh?

it amazes me that corporations are privatizing our water supplies and we are paying them to do it.

This would only make sense if public water and bottled water were in fact the same product.

It's well know that most municipal water has plenty of chlorine, flourine, and other metals in it. This may or may not be bad, but it still means that it is different than "pure water". Consumers should be able to choose what kind of water they want to drink.

I think the video was poorly put together and did not research all aspects of the issue. I would have like to see some more scientist and experts explaining what is in tap water and what is in bottled water (several brands).

Also, the point about not trusting those "evil corporations"... why the hell would I want to trust the government instead? They mess up even worse than big business does, IMO. The water supply at my school (university of nc at chapel hill) just recently found to have unsafe levels of lead. Who knows how much of that water has been consumed?

One environmentally friendly solution that was already mentioned by another poster is to buy a large 5-gallon container and fill up at a whole foods or store with a reverse osmosis or deionized water supply. Why didnt they suggest that in the video?

PLEASE FOR THOSE OF US THAT NEED IT, DO NOT BOYCOT GALLONS OF BOTTLED WATER. I buy store brand and it has saved my life.

I drink bottled water ONE main reason: health related. Not for vanity.

1. My landlord refuses to have the well water tested. She insists it is fine. While I was on this water, my immune system has pretty much shut down. The same thing happened to my cat, rip 10/12/07.

I had back to back systemic staph infections of the blood, not contagious, but harmful if they started to effect my internal organs. And my kidneys are effected 12 mos later. Other organs may be affected, and I haven't had emergencies with them yet. The infections caused my lymph nodes (more than I or my doctor could ever count) to burst. This is an extreme reaction and is extremely rare for someone's immune system to be harmed so much for that to occur. Typically 4-6 grape-like nodes bursting in one area over a 1-3 day period, very painful and causing wounds ranging from 1x2" to 3x4" (depending on how many nodes burst) that would drain lymph for weeks, also very painful. One episode (a lyguinal lymph node along bikini line) --yeah icky sorry-- it was the size on an egg before it was lanced & drained. It would refill within hours. Making walking torture. That happened while I still had 2 on my neck draining. It took months b4 we found an antibiotic that would for a time, kill the blood infection. (we tried so many).
Finally a cure, I had more 20 day rounds of Cipero than anyone else my doctor has ever treated from back to back blood inctions. Even if I shower and I have a fresh cat scrach, I get the systemic staph infection in my blood and it effects my entire body and my immune system.

Possibly due to this, Now I don't make white blood cells in the amounts needed to battle common infection. That was one reason it was hard to see on a blood test that I had an infection. No rise in white blood cells. That is how they see if you have an infection.

I lost 11 months sick unable to leave my bed unless taken to a doctor or specialist, all because of the only water I have access to. I slept constantly from weakness. Drank water due to easy dyhydration, a poision. I watched current TV way too much!

I now can use my computer maybe 30 min a day only to contact family, of all live in other states, via a blog. I stopped that blog when no family bothered to read it.

I met a guy and I wanted to date, but was too sick. After I had a horrible fall, broke bones, etc. He came and took me to the ER on our first meeting and stayed all night with me. There he saw 2 wounds on my neck both larger than 3x4 and I had more. I had tried to hide them with my hair. The next day he brought me 1 month supply of bottled "drinking water". After 20 more days of Cipero, It took 3 weeks, and I was mostly healed. Only re-occurance was happed when. first- I ate a piece of pumpkin pie , and well water was used to make it. I did not know this. Lymph nodes burst less that 30 hours later. Other- I had open scratches from my new kitten and I was infected via shower. More Cipero. Now I have had that water 3 mos. Health is doing much better, but slowly. I am thankful we have it available. My water cost 79 cents a day. I am not allowed to deduct this from my rent. In fact my landlady wants me to pay her 425 to clean the carpet in my tiny room and wash my night stand. She was raised on this water, I in Japan & never in this area in the USA. Everyone on this farm has bad-severe mental or physical health problems. She has mental illness. They all claim water is fine.

It's great to get this message out but it seems a lot of people missed the point about the bottles themselves. If your tap water tastes bad or your concerned about added chemicals-absolutely get a filter. But the larger problem is the bottles themselves. The use of the oil and wasted production costs is bad enough but the bottles in our already overloaded landfills is the real problem. And that's for the bottles that make it there. Get a cup. Help the environment.

if that was the case, then they should not have focused on the argument that the water is the same and instead just talked about how plastic requires lots of oil.

Teezy, I agree. I'm so sorry to hear your story Arcticspirit. I personally do not drink tap water. I don't drink Aquafina either though... I understand the environmental implications of bottled water, but I'm terrified of the tap! Who knows what's in there!?! Here's a freaky example... I have 2 dogs, and my oldest, a 70 pound blue nose pit, suffered for YEARS, with CHRONIC diarrhea. Thousands of dollars were spent at the Vet, yet yielded no answers. Countless times, we switched him to fancier, and more rare foods. No matter what we did, his feces was excreted as though it were water from a fire house. Purely liquid. Gross, i know, but also very, very dangerous. The implications of a condition like this are very serious. In any case, we continued struggling with this until I started thinking about the fact that he was always getting dehydrated. In my nutritional experience, I know that humans absorb spring water better than anything else, so I thought I'd give it a try with him. Arrowhead into the doggie bowl. Well, clearly there's a point to this story, and the point is that IT WAS THE TAP WATER that caused his severe reaction. The very next day, after testing, he had his first solid stool in ages. Sad to say, that's a happy day for me! Since then I have played with the water a bit, and now I know that it doesn't have to be "spring" water, it just can't be unfiltered tap water. Knowing that there is something in there that could have that kind of reaction, well, that's frightening to say the least. I would be happy to drink tap water, if only it didn't taste weird and make my dogs sick. Sounds reasonable, right? I do reuse bottles and refill them at the vending machines outside of the grocery store. For my own water, I buy large bottles and use glasses. Not the best, I know, but I DO try.