Consumers are wasting billions of dollars a year on billions of gallons of bottled water in large part because advertising
spin has led them to believe that water in a bottle is safer or better than tap water. Truth is, tap water generally is just as safe, clean, and healthy as bottled water, and in many cases more so.

In fact, the federal government requires far more rigorous
and frequent safety testing and monitoring of municipal
drinking water. The Environmental Protection Agency
requires that utility companies test municipal water hundreds
of times per month, while the Food and Drug Administration
requires only one water test per week by bottling companies.
Bottled water causes many equity, public health, and
environmental problems. Beverage companies often take
water from municipal or underground sources that local
people need. As much as 40 percent of bottled water
comes from the tap. Producing plastic bottles uses energy
and emits toxic chemicals. Transporting the bottled water
spews pollution into the air, adding to global climate
change.

By turning to your home tap, you’ll avoid the arsenic, microbes, toxins, and other pollutants that tests have found
in various bottled water brands. What’s more, you’ll face
less risk of exposure to chemicals that could leach from the
plastic bottle into the water.

Turning to tap water could help you save money, as well.
Tap water costs about $0.002 per gallon compared to the
$0.89 to $8.26 per gallon charge for bottled water.
Giving up bottled water also helps our environment. Annual
production of the plastic (PET or polyethylene) bottles
to meet U.S. consumer demand for bottled water takes the
equivalent of about 17.6 million barrels of oil, not including
the cost of transporting the bottled water to consumers.
That more or less equals the amount of oil required to fuel
more than one million vehicles on U.S. roads each year. Worldwide bottling of water uses about 2.7 million tons of plastic each year. And in the end, about 86 percent of
the empty plastic water bottles in the United States land
in the garbage instead of being recycled.

For more information about the problems with bottled
water and why tap water is better, please read our report,
Take Back the Tap: Why Choosing Tap Water Over Bottled
Water is Better for Your Health, Your Pocketbook, and the
Environment. It’s available at: http://www.takebackthetap.org