Bottled water: Good money, and intentions, down the drain

HLN Money Expert Clark Howard

The average person who buys bottled water blows $1,400 a year, not to mention the environmental angle I never talk about. People who are into “going green” think bottled water is a disaster.

Bottles that never end up degrading fill up landfill space, and when you add in packaging and delivery costs, it’s an absolutely terrible, abysmal waste, whichever way you look at it.

Well, a town in Australia decided it had enough. And they banned bottled water. Banned it! And it’s the ban heard around the world. Because if you want to create a nightmare for the bottled water industry, you make their product illegal. And that's what happened in the tiny hamlet of Bundanoon, Australia, about 100 miles from Sydney. This appears to be the first community in the world to completely stop selling bottled water.

Here's a bulletin for you: we don’t know where most bottled water comes from. Because bottled water, under the alphabet soup of federal regulation, is very lightly overseen.

Bottled water manufacturers are not required to disclose where their product came from. So, you could be paying big money for water that comes from the tap. And in most cases, bottled water is only checked for safety about 12 times a year, whereas tap water is usually tested several times a day.

If you’re still not comfortable drinking from the tap, then consider a compromise that will still save you around 90 percent of the cost. And that is to use one of those simple filtration systems for tap water.

You can buy a water filter for your home that cost about four dollars. Whatever gives you the confidence that you're comfortable not wasting money on bottled water anymore is fine with me. So just think about it. It’s something we are way overdue for in this country.