DailyDirt: There's No Such Thing As Free Water
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Americans drink billions of gallons of bottled water each year. Despite a significant fraction of bottled water being simply re-packaged tap water, consumers still buy water is relatively expensive bottles when potable water in generally available for free (or at subsidized prices). Studies have shown that, in blind taste tests, people can’t really tell the difference between tap and bottled water. (Wine drinkers have also failed similar kinds of taste tests over inexpensive versus expensive wines.) So here are just a few links on the curious phenomenon of drinking bottled water when equally healthy tap water is widely available.
- A water sommelier is a serious profession in the $12+ billion bottled water industry. Drinking water might not seem like a luxury item now… (let’s hope free sources of potable water continue to exist). [url]
- The water in various beverages can be traced back to its geographical origin by the isotopic ratios of oxygen and hydrogen. Bottled water, beer and soft drinks can be analyzed, and the purchase locations of these drinks can be roughly determined. [url]
- The price of bottled water is not highly correlated to the cost of the water or the materials used in making the bottle. Processing/Distribution and marketing are significant components of the price of bottled water, but ultimately, bottled water prices are set by what consumers are willing to spend on a refreshing bottle of H2O. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: beverages, bottled water, economics, h2o, isotopes, potable, pricing, water, water sommelier
Comments on “DailyDirt: There's No Such Thing As Free Water”
Trust marketing. It will tell you what you want. You know, like Miller Lite…Tastes Great! Um… yep.
In a blind taste test, people couldn’t tell the difference between before it went in and after it came out.
Michael “is” and “in” in is the wrong place, Your. :^)
Drinking water might not seem like a luxury item now… (let’s hope free sources of potable water continue to exist).
Until the oil and gas companies succeed in poisoning the majority of the drinking water via fracking. Once people can no longer use tap water, the bottled water companies will make a killing.
Re: Tap water
I never understood this “drinking tap water” thing. We are taught since birth that one should only drink filtered or boiled water. I have never seen anywhere without a water filter to get the drinking water.
Re: Re: Tap water
Where I live, the water is excellent out of the tap. Cleaner, safer, and better tasting than most bottled water. Almost everyone drinks the tap water and filters are very rare.
I never understood the appeal of bottled water until I traveled.
Re: Re: Re: Tap water
Where I live, the water is excellent out of the tap. Cleaner, safer, and better tasting than most bottled water. Almost everyone drinks the tap water and filters are very rare.
I live in the suburbs in Connecticut and our tap water doesn’t taste very good. It probably won’t make you gag, but it definitely doesn’t taste as good as bottled or filtered water.
I used to have a filter hooked up and it made the water taste much better. Unfortunately, my current faucet, which needs replacing, isn’t designed to accept the adapter from the filter.
NSTAAFL NSTAFW
Where does one find “free” water ?????? Unless you are sitting next to a stream and put your face into drink ………… Someone had to do something to get the water to you. And so there was a cost involved. There is no magical “processed water for free” tree.
#TIHARTAFLF
Bottled water does prove one thing about copyright.
Even when you give it for free, people will still spend billions buying the marketed stuff.
Arizona
Obviously you’ve never had the tap water in Arizona… I’m sure in many places its quite fine to drink the tap water. Here in Arizona, at least in the greater Phoenix area, the tap water is horrid. So bad in fact that the city put out fliers on how to make the tap water taste better.
Last year, my great aunt visited from upstate New York, she went to drink a glass of water, she filled a glass from the tap, took one drink and dumped the glass out and said our water is terrible compared to what they get in New York.
They can say what they want about the safety of the water, but the plain and simple fact is, the water around here tastes horrible.
I am a big water drinker, I drink between 2 and 4 gallons a day depending on how much time I spend outside in the heat. Water is the only thing I drink, I dont drink soda, tea or coffee or anything else, except for the occasional Gatorade, but even thats rare.
I’ve been this way my entire life, its not a conscious decision I make, I just drink lots of water, though for the last 10 years or so, the decision to completely avoid soda and other sugary drinks has been by choice. But, I’ve always been a big water drinker, and I can tell you that tap water tastes really bad around here. If you ice it down, its tolerable but still tastes bad.
You live in a desert and complain about the taste of the water?
Re: Re:
Actually, I have found that at least in the west the quality of the water is inversely proportional to the size of the city.
Re: Re: Re:
I live in the west and have generally found the opposite: the larger the city, the better the water quality. But it probably depends on where in the west we’re talking about — the water quality in southern California, for instance, isn’t that incredible.