<story><title>Bottled water is 3,500 times worse for the environment than tap water</title><url>https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/08/05/bottled-water-is-3-500-times-worse-for-the-environment-than-tap-water-say-scientists</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway803453</author><text>I got blind sided by an argument when visiting a friend recently because I carry a reusable water bottle with me whenever I leave home for more than a few hours whereas he brings throwaway water bottles. At one point he gestures to my bottled water and asked &amp;quot;does that make you feel good about yourself ?&amp;quot; implying I am virtue signaling.&lt;p&gt;I explained that I saw a documentary ~10 years ago where the claim was if you can do one thing for the environment, please stop purchasing bottled water. It seemed like an easy request, so why not.&lt;p&gt;I then rhetorically asked him if he &amp;quot;felt good&amp;quot; about himself because he doesn&amp;#x27;t just throw his trash out the car window, which is what we city kids (and adults) used to do in the early 80s. &amp;quot;No you don&amp;#x27;t do it and you don&amp;#x27;t think about it, right ? It&amp;#x27;s the same with my water bottle. I don&amp;#x27;t lecture anyone, and I honestly didn&amp;#x27;t think once about what he or others are doing.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Culture changes many times for the better. It&amp;#x27;s odd though how some people are the last to get the memo despite similar demographics.</text></comment>
<story><title>Bottled water is 3,500 times worse for the environment than tap water</title><url>https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/08/05/bottled-water-is-3-500-times-worse-for-the-environment-than-tap-water-say-scientists</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>reacharavindh</author><text>Boy, talk about timing.&lt;p&gt;I just used up about 16 liters of bottled water in about 4 days because we started to doubt that our tap water got us all(family) sick at the same time. When I tried to test the water, I found no easy way to do so; all test kits on Amazon turns up with comically bad reviews. Local water testing lab only tests for specific pollutants with legal precedence like Lead, Cadmium, Mercury etc. There was not a single trustworthy test I could find to say here is a decent test profile we ran on your sample, and here is the water quality score.&lt;p&gt;Context:  I moved 2 weeks ago to Amsterdam, NL from Denmark where we had been drinking tap water without any thought and trouble.&lt;p&gt;A scientifically dumb test to get off tap water while we were all sick(sore throat, bad stomach, and mild fever - yes, COVID negative) worked and we are not sick now. I don’t know whether to stop using bottled water and go back to tap water or to continue this environmentally bad choice of bottled water in fear of health.&lt;p&gt;I used to believe that tap water is a good natural choice as it packs minerals and useful natural solubles that would have been filtered out in bottled water. But, if it could get me sick, I don’t know what to do.&lt;p&gt;Hopefully we don’t get the same sickness again now that we are drinking tap water, and I could build up my trust again on tap water.</text></comment>