That seemingly affordable bottle of water that you buy from the store shelf is actually costing you a lot more in the long run than you might think. Sure, we see that low price tag generally hovering around $1 or so and think that this is a smart buy. But for the small amount of filtered water it provides to you, one generally is better off thinking in the long term and considering using home water filters instead. The ongoing debate about using bottled water versus home filtering units has increased in recent years. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the bottled water industry generates an estimated $4 billion in annual revenue in the U.S. alone. Furthermore, The International Bottled Water Association says that Americans consumed more than 8 billion gallons of water in 2009, thus emphasizing how profitable this industry has become. Find out which one makes the most sense for you by learning about why home water filtration could be the more economically viable and convenient option for you.
Youre Grossly Overpaying for Bottled Water
Most Americans scowl when they are told they are spending too much money on something. Thats because times are tough right now and most people are pinching their budgets just to make ends meet. Did you know that a large majority of the cost for a bottle of water comes from shipping and logistics as well as packaging and advertising? That bottle only costs about $0.10 cents to make, but you pay more than $1 for it. Compared to filter watered at home, which costs about $0.25 cents per gallon, you are paying more than ten times the price for the same amount of water. A recent article by TLC purports that families of four that use a water filtration device at home instead of buying water bottles at the store stand to save more than $2,800 per year on associated costs.
Reducing Carbon Footprint
If bottled water is a $4 billion industry, and if the average cost is about $1 per bottle, this means that effectively 4 billion bottles are being created and used each year in America. While plenty of people are wary of the dangers of not recycling plastics, many people are equally as careless about it. Billions of empty bottles of water dot our roadways as litter, poison our oceans and or get dumped in the landfills where they sit for hundreds of years. That aside, the transportation costs of the trucks that deliver the water to the stores, the fuel spent by laborers getting to and from these production plants, and the pollution that these plants emit when creating these bottled water packages is enormous.
Overall Convenience
Bottled water is a convenient source of pure water. Considering that you can always buy reusable bottles and carry your own water from home in them, there are some other conveniences that home filter systems offer. For example, you can have access to a pure water source for drinking, bathing or cooking at all times. And, you are only paying tap water prices on the water plus a small amount of the filter cost each time you use it. While the choice is ultimately yours, when you run the numbers and compare them, home units win the battle every single time.
