Bottled Water: What's the Attraction?

Even though a vast majority of United States (US) citizens have access to drinking water through a public water system, which is one of the safest in the world, many still prefer to consume water commercially packaged in a plastic bottle rather than from the tap. It was found that between 2011 and 2018 about 46.3% of U.S. adults (i.e., greater than 19 years of age) chose not to drink tap water and 37.5% drank bottled water on any given day (source). In fact, bottled water intake increased from 350 million US gallons in 1976 to 12.8 billion US gallons in 2016, even though the cost of bottled water has historically ranged from 240 to 10,000 times higher than tap water (source). These numbers move us to ask the following questions: What are potential reasons for prefering bottled over tap water and are they influenced by demographic factors, such as age, ethnicity, income, education, etc.? Have these preferences been affected by local issues related to the quality, safety, and/or source of tap water? Or does drinking bottled water serve as a symbol indicating an individual's status in society? Various studies performed in the second half of the previous decade may help shed some light on these questions.

A study performed in 2018 by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that 1 out of every 7 adults did not consider their tap water safe to drink, while 2 out of every 5 adults perceived bottled water as being safer to drink than tap water. Also, 1 out of every 4 adults did not like the taste of their tap water. These negative perceptions of tap water were found to be more prevalent among the following adult demographics:

• single and/or young adults,

• lower education and/or income

• non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic

• living in the West

• renters

There is much evidence that the predominant factor that makes bottled water seem like a more attractive option is the perceived low quality of our tap water. Well-known drinking water crises, such as the one that took place in Flint, MI, in 2013-2014 have likely reinforeced this perception with the result being that more US adults claimed to avoid drinking tap water following than during the Flint crisis (source). Previous research has also revealed racial disparities related to access to community water services (source) with low-income households suffering more from water insecurity and ethnic minorities having more negative experiences related to their tap water. Evidence of this is the fact that almost 70% of Hispanic adults say that they would buy less bottled water if they could trust that their home tap water was safe to drink (source).

The factors identified above do not absolve bottled water companies from their part in inflating the positive perception of tap water quality. Even though a majority of bottled water is essentially just bottled tap water, most brands contain pictures and words that are intended to make you think they come from clean sources that are often located in far off and pristine lands. The following video does a great job in addressing this issue as well as demonstrating actual water quality tests between bottled and tap water.

https://youtu.be/WcHWQnoE95w?si=vx1DQGHBSeplkzbJ

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Helpful Hint

Take the time to watch the video and read some of the articles linked above. Hopefully, this helps add some context to the reasons why many people still consume bottled water regardless of increased awareness surrounding its negative health effects companed to tap water and substantial contribution to microplastic pollution.