They don’t actually produce the bottles. They buy them from another manufacturer and just fill them with water.
You’re mostly paying for the cost of the bottle plus artificial markups for your water. A Brita filter for tap water is much more cost effective for the consumer assuming their tap water is safe.
A Brita filter for tap water is much more cost effective for the consumer assuming their tap water is safe.
Here (the Netherlands) tap water is much, much cleaner than bottled water. It’s subject to much stricter regulations than bottled water. If the stuff in bottled water would come out of your tap then the water company would be in big trouble.
The two major companies blue triton and niagra do have their bottles made in house. They use plastic resin in a preform machine that then goes to a blowmolding machine to form the bottles then its filled right after. Blue triton is the investment group that bought out nestle waters north America back in 2021
Water landlords smh. Or maybe waterlords?
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Is more the distribution costs.
And honestly any plastic bottled drink is just as bad. They just add some sugar and flavouring so it’s even worse for you.
Turns out, plastic bottles put plastic into your system.
I really hate these headlines. “100 times more!!! Will somebody think of the children!!!”
A better headline would express if this is actually concerning or not for our health. 100 times more than an insignificant quantity can still be an insignificant quantity.
Let’s put it this way: it’s infinitely more plastic than would be in your body under natural circumstances.
They want you to accept your role in a capitalist society. There’s no need for numerous public water fountains if you can pay for water, and since you’re not paying for the premium glass bottles, you should accept some microplastics.
Or, society could actually provide a lot of public fountains, but that might mean taxing the richest to the point where they only have enough money for a hundred lifetimes, instead of a thousand lifetimes.
I mean bottled water even tastes like plastic so it should be no surprise to anyone.
I hate water companies as much as the next guy, but processing water can be really expensive and would be disastrous for a company to do poorly. This take is like saying “you know fence companies don’t produce iron, right?” No, but it takes money to make the iron into a fence, just like it takes money to make water potable.
That said, water companies can still go eat a dick. Idk how ethical smaller companies like liquid death are, but I just refill a reusable bottle when at all possible. I will go thirsty out of spite if the only water available is Nestlé. There is a lot more to complain about than saying they “don’t produce anything.”
What company that sells bottled water processes it themselves? The two types I know are syphoning it from a spring and those (at least where I’m from) are not allowed to process it and still call it “from spring XYZ”… and those who just fill up tap water somewhere where it can pass as mineral water and then transport it over the globe.
Disposable plastic should be illegal. It’s cheap, but only because of all the externalized costs.
In Finland 93% of plastic, glass and aluminium drink containers are returned back to the store and recycled into new ones.
thankfully if plastic is gone we wouldn’t be left with a majority of the hassle to deal with in the public sector, i.e. what another commenter called “externalized costs”
Or they should be made so expensive that they only make sense when there really is no alternative.
“You know what would make water better? A small container with a shitload of microplastics!“
Filtration gang for life
What’s the filter made out of?
-Tap water gang
Eh, people usually filter water when their tap water isn’t clean enough?
Good quality tap water is also filtered and treated, but it happens earlier down the line
I’m working on my lived experience. I’m not going to apologize for paying a shitload of taxes to have tap water I can drink though.
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Lucky to have spring water in the tap so no filters :)
What do you think the water lines are made out of?
Um, copper actually.
In your house, sure, but I’ll bet if you go check the water main coming to your house it’s plastic. If it’s super old then it’s steel but it sure isn’t copper.
It would maybe be cast iron. Not steel. Plastic isn’t typically used here.
Yeah may be iron aswell. Those old ferrous pipes looks pretty bad on the inside aswell. I’d be quite surprised if there wasn’t any plastic pipes used but I guess that’s possible.
Interestingly the whole circuit for the building was redone a few weeks ago. There was no plastic used at any point to the mains (except for a temporary link while waiting for one of the trenches to be dug). As I said, it’s just not used here.
It is used for parts of the outgoing flow though, but most of it is still cast iron as well. I’m not in the US, so YMMV.
How old is your house?
My house has copper pipes for the most part but the water main coming to my house is plastic. Older main lines are often steel but as they age and get replaced they’re replaced with plastic and in new houses it’s mostly PEX/composite pipes aswell.
Yeah I have PEX inside lol. Guess it’s better than lead.
They don’t technically produce the water, but they are probably the ones filtering it and stuff
It’s worse than that. They consume the bottles, and then resell the bottles filled with something that is supposedly a human right, for profit.
Pretty sure they don’t claim that they “produce water”.
When they first started showing up at gas stations I thought it was so absurd. That day I learned if it exists in a retail store someone will buy it.
This is without me looking it up because I don’t really care enough to. But more than likely, the bottled water companies do not make their own bottles. They probably buy from manufacturers of bottles, then do the hard part of filling them up.
Majority of the bottlers who are of notable size buy “blanks” which are heated, blown, and formed by equipment as part of the bottling process. Blanks are essentially the lip and cap portion of the bottle, but instead of a bottle below that it’s a vial of plastic about 2 inches long and an inch wide. It’s cheaper to ship blanks and blow them at the destination than it is to ship fully formed bottles. The benefit of this method is that the bottler can have their own bottle design, but buy blanks from any standard producer.
From blanks to formed bottles filled with water is literally fractions of a second the process happens so fast. It takes longer for the bottle to get a label and end up in packaging than it does to form and fill.
EDIT: Also, very few bottlers produce their own water. They use tap water from a large municipality and then additionally treat it to match brand specs (taste and flavor). If you drink Dasani or Aquafina you’re essentially drinking tap water.
That’s actually super interesting. When I was typing out my first post, my main thought was “man it’d actually be pretty silly to ship around cases of empty bottles”. But having blanks ready to be blown into more custom molds owned by the different manufacturers would certainly be a way around it.
Funny how things change. 30 years ago drinking bottled water was considered snobby
I remember when it first started gaining popularity, and there were plenty of naysayers that couldn’t believe people would pay for water. What I really can’t believe is that people pay up to $10 for a bottle of water if the bottle is fancy enough.
It’s still largely considered insane in most parts of the world.
I lived in lower middle class and saw plenty of bottled water.
Footage of a factory making water: https://morbotron.com/video/S02E04/RxE9v_-DQOv1qB0xfB7t76FxHFk=.gif
Checkmate.
Who are those horrible orange creatures over there?
Oompa Lumpas.
Tell them I hate them!
The Donald’s bastard children my dear
Bingo!!!
I mean, it’s literally in the name
I’m not filling up my Stanley in a gas station bathroom.
Feels bad man
I’ve done this multiple times where I live and the water was as great as anywhere else
That’s awesome. I’m glad you don’t care that most these bathrooms are cleaned up by minimum wage employees who couldn’t give a fuck. I for one will avoid those sinks and purchase one that I know is sanitary.
I feel like letting the water flow for a few seconds, and maybe rubbing round the spout of the tap with a wet finger, is good enough safety-wise. My main problem is almost all public was basins I see have mixer taps with no way make it 100% cold. I’m not keen on drinking water that’s been through the boiler/heating system as those things always look manky inside, it makes sense to me that more (or more dangerous) microbes might be present in the warmth, and it tastes bad anyway.
