I just read a BBC article about a new study showing that the bottled water of major brands (Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Pepsi…) is contaminated by microparticles of plastic. Here’s the link : goo.gl/fCPQp6.
Just a few years ago I discovered that Italians are the major consumers of bottled water in Europe…We’re talking, more than 10 BILLION liters of bottled water per year. 
That means that every single Italian drinks about 208 liters of bottled water per year…Now, if you exclude those of us–and there are quite a few by now–who do NOT buy bottled water, that adds up to A LOT of bottles, which, er, don’t always get recycled (another problem altogether, sigh… 🙁 ).
I’ve always felt that there’s something wrong with Italians’ bottled water obsession. My gut feeling would increase during the summer, when I’d notice trucks, loaded with bottled water, parked all over the city in the HOT SUN…It didn’t take a genius to figure out that those plastic bottles were heating up and releasing toxic crap into the water…And this was even before we knew about BPA…
I still have friends telling me that they can only drink bottled water. It’s crazy.
Plus, bottled water is bad for your back!!! Whenever I’m at the supermarket, I see Italians struggling to lift their heavy loads of bottled water into their carts. Ouch!
Bottled water makes no sense to me, on any level. Of course, it makes sense to the bottled water producers that deluge us with commercials in which famous soccer players or actors tell us how healthful a particular brand of mineral water is, blablabla. Boy, I can’t even imagine how much money these brands make…
Anyway…
Truth be told, the BBC article points out that plastic particles are a bit everywhere: “Last year, Prof Mason found plastic particles in samples of tap water and other researchers have spotted them in seafood, beer, sea salt and even the air.”
But if we all stopped drinking bottled water, there is no question that we would help reduce the amount of plastic (bottles) in the environment…That’s a huge incentive to stop, right there.
And so I’m sticking to my tap water…unless, of course, I’m in a place where it isn’t safe to drink it…
I use a Big Berkey water filter. It takes up a bit of counter space, but is so worth it. The water is properly filtered, tastes great, leaving minerals in and the filters only need to be changed about once in 10 years! I constantly fill my steel water bottles with it for when going outside, plenty of fresh water to cook with this way, etc. Check it out!