Bottled Water Facts

Today we buy more bottled water than ever before - the average Brit will spend £25,000 on bottled water and drinks in their lifetime. But there are other  costs too.

• Bottled water typically travels 1,000 km from bottling plant to house and the majority end up in landfill.
• In UK supermarkets, 30% of all bottled water sold is actually tap water.
• Big companies make big money out of reprocessing tap water. Some simply distill tap water (look out for 'purified' on the label) before artificially adding the minerals that have been lost in the purification process.
• Only about 20% of plastic bottles are recycled in the UK; the rest are sent to landfill.

There may be health risks too.

• Bottled water may be more harmful than tap water. Some bottled waters have been found to contain potentially dangerous levels of bacteria - far more than would ever be allowed in tap water.
• UK regulations for tap water are among the strictest in the world. Contrary to popular belief, tap water is not re-cycled waste water. What comes out of your tap originally came from streams, springs and resevoirs - which sounds remarkably similar to what you pay for in a plastic bottle.
• It is an urban myth that single-use plastic bottles release 'cancer-causing'  chemicals (e.g. BPA, DHEA and dioxins) since none of these substances exist in today's bottles. But some scientists have recently detected low levels of chemicals in bottled water that can act on the body like the female hormone oestrogen; more research is needed on whether they are harmful.

Finally, taste tests have proven that most of us can't tell the difference between mineral water and refrigerated tap water. So save money and reduce plastic waste by keeping a bottle of the free stuff in the fridge.

Dr Stuart Farrimond feature in The Wiltshire Times 13 March 2015