11 Reasons Why Tap Water Is Better Than Bottled Water

Though there are times when buying a bottled water is convenient, it’s not a wise habit — and you’re being overcharged by a huge amount for the product. You may already know some of the reasons listed below why tap water is better, yet other facts will be a surprise.

Cost

• Bottled water typically costs more than gasoline. Most bottled water today is simply filtered tap water. During a five-year stretch (2009 – 2014), the percentage of bottled water that came from municipal water rose from 51.8 percent to nearly 64 percent.
• Tap water costs a fraction of the price of one plastic bottle of water. In fact, a gallon of tap water costs less than a penny. During 2024, CUD ran a price comparison. If a single, 20-ounce bottle of water costs roughly $2, that same money will buy over 300 gallons of our tap water.

Safety and quality of tap water

• The federal government requires more rigorous safety monitoring of municipal tap water than it does of bottled water. That information comes from a U.S. Government Accountability Office document called “Bottled Water: FDA Safety and Consumer Protections Are Often Less Stringent Than Comparable EPA Protections for Tap Water” (published in June 2009).
• Consumer Reports noted in 2020 that the bottled water industry made the shift from spring water to purified (treated municipal water) in the 1990s.
• When tap water is run through additional filters by bottling companies, the process removes helpful minerals such as calcium and magnesium.

Environmental footprint of bottled water

• Not only do bottling companies deplete water supplies by taking municipal water at a large discount, they reduce the groundwater that’s available for more pressing local needs.
• The plastic bottles mostly end up as litter or in landfills. In 2021, the bottled water industry created roughly 600 billion plastic bottles, which led to about 25 million tons of plastic waste. The Los Angeles Times noted in 2021 that Americans throw away more than 60 million plastic bottles every day.
• If the plastics industry were its own country, it would be the fifth-largest emitter of greenhouses on the planet.
• Bottled water is 1,100 – 2,000 times as energy intensive as the tap water process. (Food and Water Watch calculation based on data from article titled “Energy implications of bottled water” by P.H. Gleick and H.S. Cooley in Environmental Research Letters (Vol. 4, No. 1, 2009)
• The use of recycled materials in the bottling process could produce energy savings, but almost all plastic bottles are currently made from entirely new PET (polyethlene terephthalate).
• A plastic bottle takes roughly 450 years to decompose.