Expired Water?

How Does Water Go Expired?

Have you ever wondered why that bottle of Poland Spring has a “drink by” date on it when common sense dictates that water doesn’t go bad? You can thank the great state of New Jersey. A 1987 NJ state law required all food products sold there to display an expiration date of two years or less from the date of manufacture. Labeling, separating and shipping batches of expiration-dated water to the Garden State seemed a little inefficient to bottled water producers, so most of them simply started giving every bottle a two-year expiration date, no matter where it was going. Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has never established or suggested a limitation on the shelf life of bottled water as long as it’s produced in accordance with regulations and the bottle remains properly sealed. Makes sense, because it’s, you know…water. 

Better WIth Age?

While “expired” unopened bottled water isn’t going to do you any harm, it isn’t going to get better with age, either. The plastic that water is packaged in — usually polyethylene terephthalate (PET) for retail bottles and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) for water cooler jugs — is slightly porous, so the water can pick up smells and tastes from the outside world. Keep a case of bottled water in the basement for a year or so and it’s going to pick up some interesting flavors. There’s nothing better on a hot summer day than a 2007 Evian, with hints of dust and a crisp kitty litter finish!

Original Article from Mental Floss 

Great article on bottled water from FoodandWaterWatch.org.

Why buy bottled water when you can own a Whole Home Water Cleaner and drink better than bottled water from every tap in your home for under $30 a month?

Click here for more information.

Bottled Water Costs Consumers and the Environment

In 2009, U.S. consumers purchased 8.45 billion gallons of bottled water, 2.5 percent less than was consumed in 2008. Bottled water sales declined in both 2008 and 2009 as consumers cut back on unnecessary expenses during the economic recession and consumers became increasingly aware of the environmental concerns associated with the product.

GET THE FACTS IN OUR REPORT
American consumers drink more bottled water every year, in part because
they think it is somehow safer or better than tap water. They collectively spend hundreds or thousands of dollars more per gallon for water in a plastic bottle than they would for the H20 flowing from their taps.
Learn about the various problems with bottled water and why you should switch to tap water. Read our new report, Take Back the Tap: Why Choosing Tap Water over Bottled Water is Better for Your Health, Your Pocketbook, and the Environment.

Read the press release.

Bottled water is expensive
Americans spent $10.6 billion on bottled water in 2009 and paid up to 1,000 times the cost of tap water. And almost half of all bottled water (48.7 percent) came from municipal tap water supplies in 2009. A growing share of bottled water is now coming from tap water.

Bottled water is bad for the environment
Bottled water wastes fossil fuels in production and transport. Bottled water production in the United States used the energy equivalent of 32 and 54 million barrels of oil to produce and transport plastic water bottles in 2007—enough to fuel about 1.5 million cars for a year. Rather than being recycled, about 75 percent of the empty plastic bottles end up in our landfills, lakes, streams and oceans, where they may never fully decompose.

Read the rest of the article here.