I just read a really interesting article that I wanted to share with you. Everyone seems to be talking about bottled water lately. People are not only concerned with the high cost of bottled water to our wallets and the environment, but also the low quality. Here is what New York Times columnist Bill Marsh had to say this morning:
Those eight daily glasses of water you're supposed to drink for good health? They will cost you $0.00135 -- about 49 cents a year -- if you take it from a New York City tap.
Or, city officials suggest, you could spend 2,900 times as much, roughly $1,400 yearly, by drinking bottled water. For the extra money, they say, you get the added responsibility for piling on to the nation's waste heap and encouraging more of the industrial emissions that are heating up the planet.
But trends in American thirst quenching favor the 2,900-fold premium, as overflowing trash cans attest. In fact, bottled water is growing at the expense of every other beverage category except sports drinks. It has overtaken coffee and milk, and it is closing in on beer. Tap, if trends continue, would be next.
Now officials in New York City, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and San Francisco are campaigning to get people to reverse course and open their faucets instead of their wallets.
But beverage industry representatives say their version is not just about health and taste -- its plastic container, scorned by environmentalists, is a plus for consumers.
"The tap water quality is fine in most of the United States," said John D. Sicher Jr., editor and publisher at Beverage Digest, a trade publication. "The issue is convenience and shifting consumer preference."
Bottled water has profited from the sagging image of soft drinks, a category in decline for nearly a decade (but still the most consumed of beverages, by far). Preferences evolve -- could it be tap's turn?
