Industry Analysis

According to industry estimates, about one fourth of bottled water is tap water (and by some accounts, as much as 40 percent is derived from tap water), sometimes with additional treatment, sometimes not.

Regulations

The rules by the FDA exempt 60-70 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States from the agency’s bottled water standards, because the FDA says its rules do not apply to water packaged and sold within the same state. Nearly 40 states say they do regulate bottled water (generally with few or no resources dedicated to policing this policy). Even when bottled water is covered by the FDA’s specific bottled water standards, those rules are weaker in many ways than EPA rules that apply to big city tap water.

Public Concern

Ironically, public concern about tap water quality is at least partly responsible for the growth in bottled water sales, which have tripled in the past 10 years. Marketing, designed to convince the public of bottled water’s purity and safety, also fuels this growth. Marketing so successful that people spend 240 to over 10,000 times more per gallon for bottled water then they typically do for tap water.

Translation

With Rain Forest Water Systems the cost for purified water is about 0.03 cents per gallon, which translates into big savings for you and your family, when compared to how much is spent on a gallon of bottled water from the grocery store.

NRDC Report on Bottled Water