<p>I wonder how many germs are living inside a reusable water bottle by the end of the school year? I can guarantee my kids do not wash their bottles - Or the Brita pitchers in their mini refrigerators. Eeek! it reminds me of the hockey team water bottles that the kids shared during an entire season - usually filled in the ice rink restroom and NEVER washed.</p>
<p>Bottled water is not just bottled water. It is filtered bottled water. Highly screened. </p>
<p>For example, if you dig into the Poland Spring website, you find they test for 200 contaminants, test the water as it comes in, as it goes through the system, and that they use “comprehensive, multi-barrier filtration system that involves carefully controlled and continuously monitored disinfection processes”. These companies all advertise nature but they don’t stuff unfiltered nature into bottles. </p>
<p>The non-spring water stuff is public water run through some sort of filtering and bottled. The filtering can be extreme or not, depending on the company, the price of its product, etc.</p>
<p>I sometimes miss the many flavors of water we’d get in Italy. Water here is just water. There every brand had a distinctive taste.</p>
<p>As for colleges, they’ve been putting in fountains for filling reusable bottles and those bottles are extremely common - even handed out at events. The ban reduces the school’s costs for trash and makes people feel good.</p>
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<p>For some reason, Rome has continuously running water faucets / fountains on many streets. Yes, that water is drinkable.</p>
<p>The most important thing when reusing a water bottle is to let it dry completely after washing it. Germs that can survive in the damp often die much faster on a dry surface. You can also expose it to direct sunlight and/or swish some Listerine around in there if you’re worried.</p>
<p>I’m just glad that my son’s college was selling ice-cold water bottles in the student store during graduation weekend.</p>
<p>Seeing how bottled water is no better for you than tap water, and that drinking eight glasses of water a day (or something equivalent) has been proven to provide no benefit, bottled water and filtered water are just a waste.</p>
<p>I hope they ban bottled liquor too.</p>
<p>When I was in college, water did not come in plastic bottles and I can’t remember anyone carrying around containers either. Somehow we survived.</p>
<p>An environmental problem with bottled water that people sometimes don’t consider is it has to be transported somehow. It seems like a waste to fill trucks with gas or diesel just to move around water which we have running through pipes already!</p>
<p>(The water at my school tastes really good, much better than my suburban town’s water 15 miles away, and rivaling any bottled water. I would often bring some home after class for my son who liked it too! Oops, I guess I used gas to bring it home ;-)</p>
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<p>You do realize that EVERYTHING is transported on a truck, train, or boat that uses gas or diesel at some point, right? </p>
<p>That includes the water fountains and filtration systems…</p>
<p>However, how much fuel is used to transport and install a few water fountains compared to bottled water?</p>
<p>I imagine the amount of truck/train/boat that transports a Brita filter that’ll last me two months is significantly less than the amount of resources required to transport an equivalent amount of bottle water.</p>
<p>HarvestMoon1, if you’re seriously interested in using distilled water you could probably experiment with adding very small amounts of salt and baking soda to mimic the taste of “normal” water. If you look at most types of bottled water you’ll actually see they add a number of additives to give it the distinct taste they’re looking for.</p>
<p>Actually, it’s not a good idea to reuse (for drinking) regular plastic water bottles. Especially after they’ve been exposed to sunlight. And the older they are, the more dangerous they are. They have chemicals in them that DO break down over time and with exposure to extreme temperatures - they cause cancer.</p>
<p>Not talking about hard plastic water bottles INTENDED for reuse. But a lot of people reuse the regular plastic water bottles for multiple days. Not a good idea.</p>
<p>We have to start drinking from th puddles, like dogs and cats. if they banned water, they better ban other drinks, including pop, beer, wine.</p>
<p>I never realized that was so much to know about drinking water. Thanks, folks!</p>
<p>I applaud the colleges for installing water refilling stations. It does seem silly, however, to ban bottles of water while still allowing bottles of Coke and tea and juice: sometimes you just need a drink freshly chilled or need to replace that temporary-use refillable bottle when it gets lost, starts to wear out or gets a bit grungy. </p>
<p>I never saw the point of buying and lugging around a higher-priced purpose-made refillable bottle when you can find a perfectly-acceptable refillable water-porting container for under a buck at any neighborhood store anywhere in the world. I drink tap water almost exclusively (except for coffee and milk), but when on the run will buy the occasional bottled water or Coke, in large part for the reusable container.</p>
<p>Just make sure you discard that container at the end of the day. That’s what I was talking about. Those bottles break down and cause cancer. They’re not meant for long-term re-use.</p>
<p>Tap water smell chlorine too much. I drink only purified water. We have it at home and work. I will drink tap water if purified is not available but it taste horrible.</p>
<p>I am also reusing my bottles, some are probably 10 y o. Our air is also causing cancer, we cannot stop breathing though. But I saw huge group of Japanese kids at airport wearing masks. Maybe that is waht we should do, but they looked weird.</p>
<p>bottom line bottled water is a scam! (best marketing / super trend that I know of)</p>
<p>I am a sucker, hoorey! I still do not like the taste of not purified tap water. As a sucker, I would not drink what I do not like. but I never buy bottled water, too much trouble, have to drag it from the store, load into car, unload, store at home and dispose bottles, it truly sucks, so I am a exposed as a sucker again! I like the taste of purified water. My dentist said that any simplest filter would remove both fluoride and chlorine, they are very easy to be removed and both are great health hasards, much more than re-used water bottles.</p>
<p>D’s Campus has the water bottle filling stations. We used one this summer while there for registration and the water was warm… kind of yucky… She does carry a refillable water bottle on campus this year…</p>
<p>What I wonder is if these campuses with the ban on water, sell softdrinks via vending machine on campus and if its in plastic bottles??? Looking at the list I can say the answer for one of the campuses is yes…</p>