Better Botled or Better Not?

Bottled water is the ultimate expression of the American consumer, throw-away society. Swayed by cunning advertising campaigns consumers are lured to purchase bottled water with claims of cleaner, healthier water. But in a world where protecting the environment has become a huge concern, tying yourself to nature through bottled water is remarkably hypocritical. Simply put, bottled water is expensive, unnecessary and bad for the environment.
Municipal water in America is remarkably clean. In fact it is so clean that many different water bottlers choose to use municipal tap as their source. Simply run through a filter to remove any chemical taste the bottled water companies sell back to us what comes out of the tap at hundreds to thousands of times the cost. Rather than being an issue of health concern, bottled water has become more of a consumable fashion statement, with some brands costing more than $50 a bottle.
Additionally the process of creating and delivering bottled water is staggering. Most consumers forget about the environmental cost of running a purification plant, creating plastic bottles, and shipping water, sometimes halfway across the world. Then there is the issue of dealing with the used plastic bottles. Not every recycling plant accepts them and not everyone recycles, leaving the fate of the bottles to streams, rivers and landfills. Some two million tons of used water bottles are sent to the landfill every year, consisting of 86% of all used bottles.
Unfortunately many people cringe at the thought of tap water; citing bad taste and poor quality as reasons not to drink it. But standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency require rigorous testing for municipal water supplies giving us some of the cleanest water possible. Bottled water falls under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration which does not require the same amount of testing to be done on bottled water. It is to the point where the FDA does not require even basic disinfection of the water and testing for bacteria only needs to be done once a week. After reading about the testing requirements and the sources where some of these waters come from I would be more skeptical of the safety of the bottled water over the tap water.
Additionally taste tests have repeatedly shown that most people cannot tell the difference between tap and bottled water. But some restaurants are appealing to the bottled water culture offering ever growing selections of various artisan waters. These select waters supposedly have distinct flavors and characteristics bestowed upon them by their source waters. So while many people complain about the various additives to municipal water that are designed to keep the water clean and safe, they are willing to pay exorbitant amounts for other contaminants because they come from "nature". Ironically when making ice and cooking most people do not use bottled water, allowing the "contaminated" tap water to mix with their expensive bottled water. It just goes to show how much people are influenced by advertising and the desire to make a fashion statement.