If your place is like ours, you will find that lots of people purchase bottled water rather than using tap water. As someone who used to run the local water system, I can assure you that any municipal tap water delivered in America, and indeed throughout most of Europe, has to meet higher standards for purity and quality than water sold in bottles. Tap water also is delivered through pipes, often by gravity, with very little energy required, whereas bottled water uses petroleum for the bottles and for transport. (Indeed, some brands are transported thousands of miles.) Finally, bottled water is many, many times more expensive than tap water.Here you see summer interns Joey Bazinet and Kimberly Chun offering taste tests to staff and visitors at BIDMC. Our facilities department is trying to persuade people to make the switch to tap water. Because inside pipes sometimes add their own flavors and particulates to the municipal water, our facilities folks will install and maintain a filter in anybody's lab or office area. Installation cost = $500-$600. Annual cost to maintain = $50 ($25 filter two times per year). Compare to the annual cost of Poland Spring water of over $700.
