This article is long, but worth it.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...ey.aspx?page=1
Go ahead, read it, it will only take a few minutes, and it's a great inside look at the bottle water industry. I read it at work one lazy day, and it's completely changed my perspective on water. And how, i will fill up at the tap, not at the register.

I never was too keen on bottled water tho. I grew up drinking right out of my faucet, as did my pops and his family

Whenever I go to friend's pads I just drink out of their faucet as well. They usually say something like "we got bottled water ya know". I just tell em what my pops used to tell me. Bottled water is privately owned and operated, not as regulated. It gets bottled, put in a truck, shipped, left in stores etc... water out the faucet is regulated by the government and goes straight through pipes to me. I don't know how much of this is true or not, but my pops always told me that, and I've never gotten sick drinking tap water.

If people are still trippin, then buy them Brita water filters. My wife and I got one of those in our home, and they seem cool to me. That's all bottled water is anyway, filtered. Now when I was in Costa Rica, we always boiled or added some kind of citrus acid to the tap water before we drank it. That water was nasty tho.

I have a Pur water pitcher while I'm out at school. The water is pretty hard and its quality is suspect. I don't even like to shower in it--so filtering it before I drink is necessary. I usually buy a couple 1.5 liter water bottles at the grocery store and re-fill them with my Pur water pitcher (I tote a bottle with me to classes, etc). When the bottles have been re-filled enough that they're worn out, I'll get new ones.

I think that constantly buying bottles of water is wasteful--but if you're in a bind and it's water or soda at the gas station--water's a better choice health-wise.

I buy bottles of water to stock my cooler in my truck. That way I never pay the price for a single bottle. I refill a bottle 2-4 times, then it's thrown out. Bacteria can breed in the bottle like you wouldn't believe.
At home, I drink well water, and refill bottles with it, and make lemonade and coolaid, etc with it.
Bottled water is merely a convienance product for me.