Filtered Water VS Bottled Water 
Bottles of water are part of the everyday landscape, with people carrying them around to stay hydrated and stores stocking more and more brands. Those bottles are convenient, but they’ve also brought up some concerns regarding personal and environmental health. Bottled water helps people stay hydrated, but it’s not necessarily better than filtering your own tap water. In fact, filtering water at home can have some very good benefits.
What Does the Term “Bottled Water” Really Mean?
When you buy bottled water, what are you actually getting? You’re getting water that’s been filtered for you by an outside company. The extent of the filtering and the source determine what’s on the label.
“Drinking water,” for example, is just filtered water from a city’s municipal supply. Spring water is from a natural source and is filtered enough to make it safe to drink. Distilled water is drinking water that’s put through more rigorous filtration to remove just about every possible contaminant and mineral.
Why Bottled Water Has Become So Popular
Bottles remain a top choice for people who want to drink cleaner water for several reasons. They’re portable and easy to find, of course. People often prefer to stock bottles for emergencies because they don’t have to mess with bleaching containers or purifying the water before storing it. And commercially bottled water lasts longer. With home-bottled, filtered options, you’d have to change the water out more frequently because it doesn’t store that well for long periods of time.
Commercially bottled H2O does tend to taste and smell a lot better than many municipal supplies. It’s common to find people buying bottles simply because they can’t get rid of the odd taste or smell from their tap water.
Is Filtered Water That Different?
Filtered and bottled differ when you look at details. But overall, filtered isn’t any worse than bottled, assuming your water supply is already safe to drink. People just have a worse impression of it because the tap water that you filter comes out of faucets and water lines that often are crusted over with mineral buildup. It looks terrible, and that makes a lot of people not want to touch it even after filtering.
The Different Types of Water Filters for Your Home
Water filters come in different categories, both for the shape and size and for the process used to filter water. You can get pitcher filters that fit inside your refrigerator easily and faucet filters that attach where the aerator normally sits. You can also install under-sink filters that attach to the water lines leading up to the faucet or whole-house filters that filter everything before it enters your home’s water lines.
As for the processes used, some are physical blocks that filter out contaminants. Activated carbon/carbon-block and sediment filters are like that. The water enters the filter and trickles down through the filtering material. Contaminants stay behind on the filter. Reverse osmosis is another type of physical block, where water flows through a membrane that catches the contaminants.
Ion exchange filters remove mineral and metal ions, replacing them with other ions. Ion exchange is a great method if hard water is the main problem in your tap water.
How Bottled Can Actually Be Worse Than Filtered
In an ideal world, bottled and filtered water would both be completely safe and healthy to drink. And for the most part, both are. But water bottles bring with them a number of issues that you don’t get with filtered water.
For one thing, it’s more expensive. While water filtration installation and filter replacements may seem expensive, that’s because you’re paying money up front for a filter system that will last a long time. The few dollars you spend each week on bottles add up very quickly. Within a few weeks, the cost of bottled easily outpaces that of filtered water. Even after adding in the cost of your home’s water bill each month, the bottles can still be more expensive in the long term.
Another issue with bottles is that you don’t get test results that show what might be in the water. Your local water department has periodic testing and posts those results online or mails them to your home. Bottled-water companies tend to tell you the source of the water and let you do your own detective work from there. And while you can look up results for municipal systems listed as sources, you don’t know how much the bottled-water company’s filters remove of any contaminant in the water from the source.
The plastic bottles themselves are at the heart of two issues. One is the lack of good plastic recycling now in the U.S. A lot of plastic has simply been dumped, especially after China stopped taking so much U.S. plastic for recycling back in the 2010s. Filtered water relies on a little packaging to keep the filters sterile until you install them, but that’s about it. The type of plastic used for the bottles can also contain bisphenol A, a known endocrine disruptor and health risk.
Finally, full bottles are so heavy that transporting them uses up a lot of fuel. You may not think switching to filtered water would do much because you’re just one person. But when you switch, and other people switch, all that use adds up to better fuel conservation and pollution reduction.
Are There Ever Times When Bottled Is Better?
Bottled water does have its uses, but they’re specialized. Obviously, if you’re very thirsty and aren’t at home, stopping into a store to get bottled water is fine. You shouldn’t let yourself become dehydrated in the name of avoiding bottles.
If you need distilled water for small appliances like dehumidifiers, of course bottled water is more convenient. While you could technically distill water at home, it takes time and isn’t guaranteed to be completely pure. And commercially bottled, unopened water supplies are better for emergency storage. But for everyday drinking and cooking, filtered water is typically better overall.
Contact Us With Filter Questions
Benjamin Franklin Plumbing offers water filtration services for households in Pompano Beach and the surrounding area. We offer prompt service (as we like to say so often, “If there’s any delay, it’s YOU we pay”) that’s customized for each homeowner’s needs. Whether you want an under-sink system for one faucet or a whole-house filter, we can install it. Contact us for more information!
