Costco- what's going on with the bottled water?

Although not ideal, sometimes bottled water is still the best option for large groups (sports teams, etc)

Ignorant of the issues

Victims of marketing

More money than sense

Can't think of anything else polite to add.

Because it's something like 20p per bottle, so the mark up at resell is huge. Often you'll see them at ice-cream vans, or at outdoor events.

Some folks don’t work in an office/home so can’t access a tap throughout the day !! And I’m not paying £1 plus from shops throughout the day.

So take the bottles home to fill up, plus-one. You can reuse them for years. In health terms it's probably better drinking water that has only been in the plastic for a few hours rather than weeks, months or years.

I've seen crates of it - some drunken, some half empty, done still unopened - dumped on the sideline of sports pitches more than once. Brainless.

There's really no need for bottled water.

I used to work at Welsh Water and the drinking water results used drop onto my desk regularly so I was quite happy drinkng the tap water where I lived. Out of idle interest I wondered if as a consumer I could find the results. A few key words and a post code got me this for my old address:

file:///C:/Users/HP%206200/Downloads/WaterQuality_2023_D12.pdf

from:

https://inyourarea.digdat.co.uk/dwrcymru?loc=sy23+1ab

You should be able to hunt down similar for where you live. There are a few places in the UK I wouldn't drink the water but the majority of STWers will have excellent quality tap water. If you don't like the chlorine let it stand, if it makes scummy tea get a filter. On the other hand I'd be reluctant to drink hot weather quantities of some mineral waters as too rich in some minerals to consume in high volume.

So take the bottles home to fill up, plus-one. You can reuse them for years.

You can't, it's the wrong kind of plastic and it'll go grim. But actual proper reusable bottles shouldn't come as a shock to anyone on a cycling forum.

I don't really get it, unless you live in London where the tap water tastes crap. The stuff that comes out of the tap is subject to stricter regulations than anything you'll find in a bottle. The Girl and her bloke buy slabs of little bottles like the OP describes whilst claiming poverty, even if you just prefer bottled why not buy a big one and decant it into a bidon?

We whine about paying £1.50/litre for fuel which is dead dinosaurs highly processed and transported halfway across the world, yet not blink at £2 for a 500ml bottle of something which has literally just fallen out of the sky. It's lunacy.

You can’t, it’s the wrong kind of plastic and it’ll go grim.

Check out the best before date on your bottled water. They'll be fine up to at least that long.

On the other hand many reusable bottles of the kind used by cyclists and walkers will contain plasticisers including bisphenol A unless you use a recent baby bottle:

https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/bisphenol

Edit: I've just checked the very latest reusable bottles we've bought which are zero Bisphenol A, 18 months old. Check before you buy. Kapimex made in Holland BTW.

You can’t, it’s the wrong kind of plastic and it’ll go grim

Grim how? I've a few "single use" bottles I've been using for at least a couple of years and not noticed any problem with them.

I moved from Scotland to South England, i drink bottled water, weirdly it's pretty much like my old home tap water, i.e. Highland Spring, never drink from a tap down here unless desperate, hard water is crap.

I've just realised I thinking about all this from a French perspective because France banned bisphenol A in all food and drink packaging years ago so French bottled water bottles are fine - this may not be the case of bottled water bottles in Costco, Edinburgh.

Edit: to reply to" hard water is crap". Hard water within reason is healthy. I'll dig something up.

Edit again: so many results for "soft hard water heart disease" I'm spoilt for choice, google it.

Grim how? I’ve a few “single use” bottles I’ve been using for at least a couple of years and not noticed any problem with them.

I was reusing a... I think Volvic bottle, I like to have water on hand in the car. I took a swig one day and thought "that's not right," looked at it and it was green.

Check out the best before date on your bottled water. They’ll be fine up to at least that long.

I don't think it's age so much as reuse once it's exposed to the air. I could be wrong though.

looked at it and it was green.

Algae 🙂 It's mainly down to nutrient content. I suggested refilling bottles with fresh tap water was a good idea not keeping tap water in reused bottles for months.

I don't think the water was that old, rather the bottle was. But it was ages ago now, I can't be certain.

Hard water is a bit crap. I live in a very hard water area, and it furs up your pipes, ruins your kettle (and espresso machine as it’s stw), blocks your shower, tastes rough, and needs an entire bar of soap to get any lather.

when we tarted our house up a year or so ago the best investment was a water softener. It is in place just after the water enters the house, so all our water is treated. Our pipes are now smooth, our kettle is flake free, I don’t bother with a filter on the espresso machine any more, it tastes good, and we’ve saved a fortune in soap.

Recommended for anyone who lives in a similar area.

We whine about paying £1.50/litre for fuel which is dead dinosaurs highly processed and transported halfway across the world

Nothing to do with bottled water, but this is untrue, oil isn’t made from dead dinosaurs, it was mainly Algae and similar from far further ago than the dinosaurs.

I moved from Scotland to South England, i drink bottled water, weirdly it’s pretty much like my old home tap water, i.e. Highland Spring, never drink from a tap down here unless desperate, hard water is crap.

Hold on… no, Hangon, hold on… what? I’ve just had to re-read that again. So every litre of water you’ve drank since you moved has been wrapped in plastic? Plastic that’s going into landfill and won’t break down? You’ve deleted my attempts to reduce my plastic waste in one fell swoop.

I don’t think the water was that old, rather the bottle was. But it was ages ago now, I can’t be certain

Could just be the dream combo of slightly stale water, in a warm car, in a clear bottle conducive to photosynthesis. But who knows?

My normal use is a bottle half full of ice taken out of the freezer and topped up from the tap then used on a car journey or other outing which I'd guess is pretty unfriendly to growing unwanted stuff.

it was mainly Algae and similar from far further ago than the dinosaurs.

Nope, very much contemporaneous with donosaurs.

Hard water is a bit crap. I live in a very hard water area, and it furs up your pipes, ruins your kettle

You can buy under-sink filters with replacable paper elements for not very much money at all, if filtering out lime/calcium is what you want to do.

Bottled water isn't always softer than tap water in hard water areas. Highland Spring is likely to be but others aren't:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Classification-of-the-bottled-water-brands-based-on-total-hardness-n-12_tbl2_346739160

Live in Southeast on chalk aquifers. Hard water but the pipes and shower are fine. Need to use a few ml more shampoo or shower gel and an extra half a cap of laundry detergent. We have a filter for the kettle water to make a nicer cup of tea but wouldn't dream of buying bottled water. Really I do despare at the above.

If you do use a water softener be careful what you do with the water. A German athlete put a metal fish in her water softening jug for decoration. It leached lead and she got lead poisoning (saturnism) which led to a series of amputations among other misseries.

The water company will treat water that's too soft so it won't be a risk with lead plumbing, solder etc.. So if your water softener works well enough make sure you don't contaminate the water. Don't use lead crystal drinking glasses or decanters for example

But really, check out the analysis of your tap water and if all is well just drink it.

Hard water is nice.

Isn’t Costco full of shopkeepers and resellers. Aren’t these bottles intended for resale at festivals, parks and other places where laziness or poor planning means people want to buy a drink?

I think they (costco) are kinda like wholesalers... a bit like cash and carry etc.

But the lines are kinda blurred.

The water company will treat water that’s too soft so it won’t be a risk with lead plumbing, solder etc..

The explanation I heard here - which could be pants - is that any extant lead piping today is likely to be so furred up that little of it is in direct contact with the water supply.

Totally unrelated but the water around Matlock makes for an awesome brew. Like, you can taste everything in the bag.

You'd hate the USA cash converting trend of buying slabs of food stamp bottled water dumping it out to get the bottle deposits money back.

Not even drinking it, just watering the parking lot

Like, you can taste everything in the bag.

I said that to my girlfriend last week.

You’d hate the USA cash converting trend of buying slabs of food stamp bottled water dumping it out to get the bottle deposits money back.

Not even drinking it, just watering the parking lot

Well, that's idiocy.

You could take them back full, get your deposit and buy another slab.

Hard water is a bit crap. I live in a very hard water area, and it furs up your pipes, ruins your kettle (and espresso machine as it’s stw), blocks your shower, tastes rough, and needs an entire bar of soap to get any lather.

I quite agree about hard water depositing limescale in the kettle, but I’ve never heard of anyone around here having issues with pipes, and it’s easy enough to clear showerheads of limescale. As for needing an entire bar of soap to get a lather, I’ve never had any issues there, I buy Body Shop soap, six bars at a time and they last months. And taste? What comes out of my tap just tastes of water, it’s no different to most bottled water as regards taste.
I wonder how you’d feel if it tasted like Volvic? Which does come out of taps tasting like the bottled stuff.

@easily

when we tarted our house up a year or so ago the best investment was a water softener. It is in place just after the water enters the house, so all our water is treated.

You are not meant to soften your drinking water.  You can get three way taps with a filtered drinking water outlet if you really don't want to enjoy the much nicer taste of hard water!

Hold on… no, Hangon, hold on… what? I’ve just had to re-read that again. So every litre of water you’ve drank since you moved has been wrapped in plastic? Plastic that’s going into landfill and won’t break down? You’ve deleted my attempts to reduce my plastic waste in one fell swoop.

They live among us 🙁 If you really need to use bottled water for everything, just get one of those coffee machine style plumbed in water filter/chiller doodahs, they even make sparkling water you know.

I get through about 12 bottles of water a year, I work outside and tend to keep a 6 pack in the van for the odd occasion I run out of water I've brought from home.

It's crazy that people buy bottled water in bulk in the misguided assumption that it's better than stringently tested tap water! Especially if you buy the cheap stuff, which is just tap water in plastic.  Interesting watch, look up Tom Scott and Dasani water on YouTube

It’s crazy that people buy bottled water in bulk in the misguided assumption that it’s better than stringently tested tap water!

It could be, people need to find out which is what I've been encouraging from the start of the thread. I've also said that I wouldn't drink the tap water in some parts of the country.

One of the problems water companies have is detection limits. Sure the water is tested but some substances are potentially toxic at or below the detection limits of the machines used by water authorities. Manily organic compounds, the metals are easy.

In some areas limits are exceeded which is why I suggested people check. If you live in NI, Jersey, Scotland... check if the limits for PFAS, forever chemicals, are respected - make sure your reference is the EU level rather than whatever your local authority has decided is safe because they may not be the same.

Some of the limits themselves are the subject of debate. So if you live in an area where there's debate about the current safe level and that level is only respected by blending to get just within it I would understand if you weren't keen on drinking the tap water.

If the water authority is failing to remove these chemicals a home filter certainly won't so for a tiny number of consumers bottled water would be prudent.

Sorry, I'm not going to spend a day checking the water quality and press reports for everywhere in the UK.

Edit to add;

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60761972

Edit 2: having read through my own link Scotland should be EU compliant by now. 🙂

Hold on… no, Hangon, hold on… what? I’ve just had to re-read that again. So every litre of water you’ve drank since you moved has been wrapped in plastic? Plastic that’s going into landfill and won’t break down? You’ve deleted my attempts to reduce my plastic waste in one fell swoop.

Well the bottles go in my recycle bin, so if they end up in landfill then that's the least of the plastic waste worries in my area, i do believe they have a contract with the recycling centre so i can drink my water with less guilt hopefully.

There was a man from Veola on the radio and he said clear plastic bottles are easy to recycle. Its all the other different plastics that are a pita.

@squirrelking

Totally unrelated but the water around Matlock makes for an awesome brew. Like, you can taste everything in the bag.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/radioactivity-in-food-and-the-environment-rife-reports

Page 288, it'll be down to having the nation's highest readings for Polonium, Radium and Uranium. 👍

As the thread has reached the random stage I'll point out that plastic bottles are often recycled to produce polyester fleece clothing which when it goes through the washing machine releases microfibres into the waste water and the oceans, and end up in the fish on your dinner plate.

As the thread has reached the random stage I’ll point out that plastic bottles are often recycled to produce polyester fleece clothing which when it goes through the washing machine releases microfibres into the waste water and the oceans, and end up in the fish on your dinner plate.

I don't eat fish

I moved from Scotland to South England, i drink bottled water, weirdly it’s pretty much like my old home tap water, i.e. Highland Spring, never drink from a tap down here unless desperate, hard water is crap.
Hold on… no,

Hangon, hold on… what? I’ve just had to re-read that again. So every litre of water you’ve drank since you moved has been wrapped in plastic? Plastic that’s going into landfill and won’t break down? You’ve deleted my attempts to reduce my plastic waste in one fell swoop.

Hangon, hold on… what? I’ve just had to re-read that again. You moved from Scotland to South England? What were you thinking?

Interesting watch, look up Tom Scott and Dasani water on YouTube

I was a Sales Rep for Coca-Cola when they launched Dasani.  Flogging Milton Keynes tap water in a bottle was a tough sell!

Page 288, it’ll be down to having the nation’s highest readings for Polonium, Radium and Uranium.

I don't have time to read it just now but with these things being relative I'm not going to be overly concerned.

EDIT: wow that is quite a jump, presumably there's a lot in those hills. Still not going to worry until an AccHP tells me to though, I was only there for a week.

As always STW has given me lots to think about. I had little knowledge of the dangers of soft water.

CountZero

The plumber laughed at our piping (about 40 years old) and said he was surprised we got any water at all it was so scaled up. The softener has made a huge difference to all our appliances, and the shower glass is sparkly clean now.

I'm not too fussy about the taste of water, but it really was very, very hard, and had quite an unpleasant taste. If we forget to refill the softener even I can sense it, and I'm not exactly a sommelier. The soap bit was just a little joke.

I’m not too fussy about the taste of water, but it really was very, very hard, and had quite an unpleasant taste.

Same for me. There's an awful lot of assumption that we all get the same thing out of our taps, and that we've all got the same tastebuds.