| Tap Water is Better for You and the Environment |
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| Sandy Cosser | |||
| Wednesday, 03 September 2008 | |||
  We all know the importance of drinking water; although I’m pretty sure that a vast majority of us fall short of the recommended eight glasses a day. It’s good for everything from digestion and weight loss to maintaining your skin’s elasticity, allowing you to hold on to your youthful good looks. Many people believe that bottled or mineral water is better for you than tap water, and if you‘re in India or Mexico, that may be true. But the tap water in most industrialised countries is actually safer and better for your health than anything that comes out of a bottle. In developed countries, water boards are subject to stringent regulations and frequent testing to ensure that their water meets uncompromising and exacting safety standards. In South Africa, Rand Water (which supplies five of the country’s nine provinces) produces water that meets guidelines established by the World Health Organisation, and compares favourably with Canada, who are recognised leaders in water quality management. Bottled water, on the other hand, often contains too many added minerals to be considered safe. But this doesn’t really matter because according to foodandwaterwatch.org, up to 40% of bottled water is tap water anyway, despite what some unscrupulous advertisers state on the label. Moral ambiguity and mineral content aside, there are other reasons to dodge the bottle and turn on the tap. It takes massive amounts of energy, not to mention toxic chemicals, to produce the plastic bottles used. Despite calls to recycle, only a dedicated few actually do, and the rest clog up landfills and rubbish dumps, which causes major damage to the environment. In many cases bottled water companies use the same underground water sources that small municipalities rely on, disrupting the water supply and in some cases unintentionally contaminating it. Then there is the expense. Buying bottled water is far more expensive than the water you can get out of your tap. Some people maintain that no matter how clean their tap water is, it tastes funny. They maintain that bottled water tastes better, but in many tests carried out across the world, most people can’t tell the difference between bottled and tap water. If you’re really unhappy about the way your water tastes, you can always filter it. Point-of-use filters can be attached to faucets to reliably remove the bad taste from your mouth. No matter which way you look at it, drinking tap water makes more sense than buying your water in bottles. What are you waiting for? Open a tap today, just make sure that you close it afterwards. Recommended sites: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/pubs/reports/take-back-the-tap http://www.southafrica.info/travel/advice/water-051207.htm http://www.southafrica.info/what_happening/conf_expo/world_summit/joburgwater.htm
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