Many people don’t trust the water that comes out of their tap, and so instead of drinking it, they spend hundreds of dollars a year on bottled water.  Sure, it costs money to drink the water that comes out of the tap, but that’s only a few extra cents on your water bill.  If you drink tap water instead of bottled water, you will save hundreds of dollars a year (depending on how many bottles of water you drink, of course), and you will save hundreds of plastic or glass bottles from the need to be recycled or, worse, go into landfills.

All states have water treatment plants that ensure that your tap water is safe to drink.  The problem is what the water picks up as it goes through the pipes to your home.  Some pipes are old and can deposit rust or bacteria in your drinking water.

However, that’s where water purifiers come in.  You can purchase water purifiers that fit onto your faucet, or you can purchase refrigerators that have drinking water receptacles, after first purifying that water with filters.  Pitchers and faucet-mount filters must be changed every 1-3 months…and this will cost you about $100 a year or so.

You can find out how pure your drinking water is by asking your local water utility for the Municipal Drinking Water Contaminant Analysis Report.  Then you can compare that report with your own… merely take a sample of your tap water and send it to a local testing facility.  They’ll test it for you, for a fee, of course.  The fee is on a sliding scale depending on what you have them test for.

Now, what about bottled water?

You perhaps purchase bottled water because of the picture on the label, of a sparkling mountain spring.  You think subconsciously that that’s what you’re getting.  Pure water, never touched by man or beast. But that’s not the case.  Twenty-five percent of bottled water brands simply acquire their water the same way you do – from municipal water plants.

As with everything you buy, you must read the labels on bottled water carefully.  If the label says  “purified” or “drinking water,” it probably came from a municipal water supply.

Aquafina, owned by Pepsi, is bottled at Pepsi plants using processed municipal water.  Dasani, bottled by Coke, also uses processed municipal water, with added minerals.

In other words, you’re spending exorbitant sums for water that is no different than the water in your home, assuming you have a water filtration system of your own.

On the other hand, although “natural” has no legal meaning when it comes to fruit, vegetables and meat, it does have meaning when it comes to bottled water.  The word “natural” may only be used for bottled water which comes from springs or wells where the natural chemical composition of the water has not been altered by a treatment process.  However, the water that comes from the spring into the bottling factory must go through pipes, which may deposit trace elements of impurities in the water – which is the same reason why you won’t drink your tap water!

Depending on how much water you drink in a day, a week, a month, and so on, investigate the right water filtration system for you.  It will pay for itself over the course of a year.