In Bali, Indonesia (and many developing countries) you have no choice. Drinking tap water is also health hazard in some countries.

In Bali, Thailand and many other places in SE Asia, you can get water that comes from local treatment plants (it usually looks like this[1]) instead of "brand" bottled water (like these ones[2]), the former is almost always bottled locally (at the nearest water treatment plant, they are ubiquitous in SE Asia even in regional areas, sometimes they are subsidised by governments), as a result the water tends to stay in the bottle for a much shorter time whereas "brand" water is not sourced locally and it travels long distances after being bottled. In addition the employees of the local water treatment plant will often come and take back empty bottles to use them again, so in those cases you have nearly 100% recycling and very little plastic waste.

I don't have any evidence that [1] contains less microplastics than [2] unfortunately, but I think it could be the case.

(I have lived in Indonesia for about one year and part of my family is from Thailand).

[1] http://www.nomad4ever.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/bottle_...

[2] https://www.bali.com/media/image/865/plastic-bottles-waste.j...

Surprised you didn’t mention the ubiquitous bring-your-own-container 1 baht water vending machines in Thailand too, which as I understand it are doing ad-hoc filtering:

https://m.alibaba.com/product/137674491/Water-Vending-Machin...

Yes you are right, those are another very good example of locally treated water, my Thai relatives live in a rural area where the “gallon bottles” are more commonplace so I forgot to mention those machines.

The 18.9L/5 gallon water jugs are common even in Canada and US also, it's not unique to Asia. They do get washed and re-used also.

It's an interesting question if they'd be at risk for microplastics as well.

There’s also a system where Nestle gallon containers are filled by small merchants with local filtered bore water and recapped and sold (often as original).

In many places in SE Asia, Nestle "gallon containers" are sold at a premium compared to locally purified water (often 3X - 4X the price), but I would be curious to see side-by-side water analysis results...

If you have money, you can buy a small water filtering unit for the house that gives you drinkable “tap water”. We had one in our fridge in the early 90s in Bangkok.

Depending on what the hazard is, disinfection tablets can be effective and much cheaper than buying water.

Or SODIS sunlight disinfection.

Haven’t tried those tabs for many years but I recall them tasting terrible. Good for emergencies perhaps.

Filtration systems are available but cost several thousand dollars and require core replacements every two years for around $300-400.

On the other hand, a gallon of potable water from one of the few springs in Bali costs around $3.

The NaDCC tablets leave no taste.

Water purification tabs, straws, and bottles are not practical unless you are in an extreme environment to find clean water (hikes, for example).

- They tested awful. Iodine tablets have an awful taste after. We often use orange flavored powder to hide it.

- They are expensive in third world countries. You have to use one tablet per liter, and it costs about 10 cents USD per tablet. In comparison, you can buy a 1L plastic bottle of water for 30 cents.

- it takes about half an hour to work, so you can't use them immediately.

- Even if you buy those straws, they have a maximum lifetime before you have to replace the filter (about 1000l). You will need to replace about twice a year if you were to use as the daily drive.

I couldn’t tell any taste with the NaDCC based chlorinating tablets. They’re not household bleach.

Iodine is old tech, and has other issues.

10cents < 30cents. And don’t underestimate the logistics of transporting bottled water.

This isn't true in my experience. I've witnessed plenty of people in wealthy US suburbs that stock bottled water at home and even stock up on vacation.

They claim it's for the taste and purity.

I don't know about purity but the taste can indeed be better than tap.

My family is from Israel, we recently visited Athens. We have excellent tap water in Israel, and we only drink water at home. No soft drinks and very little juices.

The tap was in Athens was, for us, extremely good tasting. We found ourselves constantly drinking the water, it was actually a treat to drink. We found it far better than either our own tap water, or the bottled water (Ein Gedi) that we bring with us when camping.

It can also be worse. I'd guess for almost everybody the difference in taste is dominated by the placebo effect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIJEw5aDzOo

I mean, maybe to you it's a placebo effect, but I know I can at least smell the chlorine in my tap water... which I suppose isn't strictly "taste" but basically the same for the point of the discussion.

A lot of bottled water comes from municipal water plants (aka tap water).

That Penn & Teller YouTube link even has a section showing this, though you only need to go to the supermarket and look closely at the fine print of all the different brands of bottle water. You'll quickly find a lot are tap water.

"Tap" doesn't always have a uniform flavor, even in the same city. It's perfectly possible that bottled tap might taste better than the tap water at your house.

I was just in the US and I couldn't drink the bottled water, basically, due to it tasting terrible. The San Francisco tap water was surprisingly good when filtered, and I did find a brand called "Iceland Spring" or something similar that was good. Evian also has a consistently good taste.

That’s weird, I find Evian awful in every country I go to :)

yes a lot use tap water but they almost all invariable will go through a RO system and ozination and/or uv with some minerals added back in at the end for taste. the RO water with minerals tastes better to me than a natural spring water without that treatment. (used to work in water purification for a spell)

It would be silly to draw global conclusions based on one “test” that was setup for maximum effect on television.

I’ve lived in places with tap water that is definitely noticeable vs filtered/treated water. San Jose water for example is extremely hard and I suspect few people would mistake it for bottled.

That video is just a lot more fun than a traditional study, but here you go:

https://www.wine-economics.org/aawe/wp-content/uploads/2018/...

I guess you haven't lived in Los Angeles?

Guess away.

“Better” taste is subjective.

Many people have become familiar with the flavor of plastic, and learned to associate it with “purity” or “freshness” or “quality” or whatever.

I think this is untrue; there’s plenty of difference in water taste from region to region in countries, without having to suggest it’s the taste of plastic that people react to.

In NYC I always drink bottled water, where I’ll happily drink potable tap water in most places.

Wait, what? NYC has some of the best tap water in the country (barring some old buildings with bad pipes).

Same experience, many people see tap water as being inferior and maybe even dirty, so they go with the bottled water.

> They claim it's for the taste and purity.

Then they aren't very bright.

I know lots of people who buy it because they believe it's higher quality. They don't care about the container.

That would be me and my family over the last decade.

We buy bottled water hoping it would benefit our health over tap water.

The tap water in the vast majority of the US is superior to bottled water.

There are exceptions, though, so if health is your concern, you might want to test both your tap and bottled water.

> The tap water in the vast majority of the US is superior to bottled water.

I'm surprised this myth gets repeated so often on HN. It's not true- the standards for purified bottled water are quite high[0].

[0]https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/bottled-water...

1. The link you provided suggests that some bottled water comes from Municipal sources, ie. it is tap water. This would logically imply that the standards for bottled water are <= the standards for tap water, at least in those locations.

2. The original article you are commenting on suggests that bottled water contains more microplastics than tap water.

> This would logically imply that the standards for bottled water are <= the standards for tap water, at least in those locations.

That’s not how logic works. That there are instances of municipal water supplies whose quality is sufficient to meet bottled water standards doesn’t tell you anything about minimum standards for either municipal supplies or bottled water.

Further: I would expect quality of municipal supplies to vary widely. A city built on the side of a mountain with access to springs can just provide that water, and it’s still from “municipal” supply.

Do you have your sign reversed on that inequality? If the water comes from municipal sources, and the standards are higher for bottled water than tap (clearly stated in the link), then the quality of bottled water can be, at worst, equal to tap water.

Unless impurities are introduced at the bottling plant, or with the plastic bottles.

Municipal water has to get to your house though. How clean it is at the plant doesn't really mean much if you're in an area with bad pipes (and in many places they are).

Counties still have to do testing on the water provided by the distribution network.

Hell, in my county this information is easily available online and in libraries and is broken down by measurements in the processing plant vs measurements in the distribution network. http://www.fultoncountyga.gov/images/stories/WR2/2017/CCR_20...

This won't directly tell you if your pipes are bad (and Atlanta does have some areas that used lead pipes from the county supply to the home) but it's a pretty good indicator of the water quality in my area.

If you're really concerned, it's almost always a better investment to get your tap water tested and fix the pipes than it is to buy bottled.

Have you checked if there's anything wrong with your tap water? One-time water test is probably cheap compared to years of buying bottled.

I hope in that case you buy it in refillable 5g water cooler jugs, rather than small disposable bottles.

Yep, 5 gallon water jugs.

For the majority of the population of South America, it is bought because the tap water is not potable. I imagine that is the case in other continents as well.

Really? On a recent trip to Chile and Argentina I only drank tap water everywhere and had no issues.

Africa, Asia too

I buy 2.5 gallon plastic jugs of water from the store. It tastes much better than the many "fill" services/stations around the city that exist because this cities water tastes absolutely terrible, and that's what they're filtering.

Same, Arrowhead Brand water tastes better than any other local or other water, & my wife wants that water only. I myself couldn't care less about brand.

That's how I buy it, but I've encountered plenty of people who think it's of higher quality and prefer it.

I live in central NJ. I buy bottled water because we notification about the local "city water" having some issue or another. I'd use tap water if it was safe.

When in italy, I buy bottled water because i like natuRally sparkling water, rather than still. I would welcome going back to glass bottles.