The Advantages of Using Water Filters

What's not to like about water? It's good for you and abundantly available. The popularity of bottled water has surged over the years, along with the bottlers' profits. But why pay so much for bottled water when you can get great tasting and safe water from home? The answer lies in water filters.

Water filters offer numerous benefits. Using a water filter as opposed to buying bottled water has many advantages besides just the money you'll save.

For one thing, there are a variety of options when it comes to choosing your water filter. If you're looking for something simple to set up and inexpensive, then you might want to go with a carafe, which is the type of filter I have used most. Or you could go with a faucet mounted filter, if you're okay with the little bit of extra work required to set it up. Then there are the more expensive and complicated to install options, such as an undersink filter, or a reverse-osmosis filter. The latter two filters might be better if there will be a lot of people in your household drinking the filtered water, but something like the carafe should do fine for a small household.

In addition to that, you can feel a little better about the safety of your own filtered water than that of bottled water. The bottled water industry is even less regulated than the tap water supplied from your local municipal water supply. Water filters have been shown to remove a number of contaminants which may be found in tap water, including chlorine, E. coli, and lead. Different water filters will prove better or worse at removing certain contaminants, but whichever filter you choose is likely to do a good job of removing impurities in general.

And using a water filter instead of buying bottled water can be good for the environment. All of that plastic used in producing bottled water will end up piling up in the landfills. By filling up and reusing your own bottle, you're keeping all that extra plastic from simply being tossed out. There has been some concern lately over the use of BPA in making certain plastic bottles, which could leech into your water and cause harm, so you may want to avoid reusing any plastic bottles made with BPA. But there are a variety of other bottle types which would be safe to use; for example, bottles made from polyproylene plastic or stainless steel are a couple of safe alternatives.

In sum, if you enjoy drinking plenty of water, but would rather not risk taxing your wallet, your health, or the environment too much, then go with a water filter!