Blowing the lid off bottled water
“Why would we have to buy bottled water if it wasn’t better than tap water?” he said.
LIke many others, Pirolozzi said he thought botted water was healthier than tap water because it costs more. The bottled water industry has yearly sales ranging between $50 billion to $100 billion worldwide, according to mnn.com.
Advertisements represent it as being a healthy alternative to tap water. It is bottled to be aesthetically pleasing, with one brand’s bottle shaped like a drop of water with a gold cap.
But Michelle Van Dyke, a community relations coordinator for the Hillsborough County Public Utilities Department, said bottled water is “one of the biggest marketing scams of this past century.”
“Our water costs half a penny a gallon,” said Van Dyke of Hillsborough County tap water. “When I was out with my family the other weekend, I had to buy a 16 ounce bottle of water and it cost me $2.50.”
The nationwide average cost of tap water is 0.002 cents per gallon, though consumers spend around 1,900 times as much to drink bottled water, which is about $3.80 per gallon. Those who buy bottled water in 16 ounce containers, which cost an average of $1.50, spend around 6,000 times as much money, according to a report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG).
The price of bottled water could be defendable if consumers gained something from the extra charge. But ConnieMizak, a USF professor in the department of Geography, Environment and Planning, said that has yet to be proven.
“There is no empirical evidence that bottled water is cleaner than tap water … There’s a lot of money being made on a resource that is available to all of us out of our faucets. It is a scheme, essentially,” she said. “The scary part is that, while municipal water is regulated by the EPA and has to meet the Safe Drinking Water Act standards, bottled water is regulated by the FDA and, under these rules, if bottled water is produced in a state and that product never crosses state boundaries to be sold, then it’s exempt from any regulations.”
http://www.usforacle.com/blowing-the-lid-off-bottled-water-1.2670234#.TtNlnWOVrUA
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