Unfortunately, I feel like this comment encapsulates the current state of the western world in a nutshell:
Let’s build a new complex system around bottling plastic, delivery trucks, with competing brands for sale at 10x the price instead of publicly maintained aqueducts and pipes that have been used successfully since Roman times, and advocating for rigorous standards and fixing issues at the source.
Bottling water doesn’t scale and has significantly more waste (C02 from trucking diesel exhaust and plastic)
Reminder that humans have only been drinking plastic for the last 100 years of our existence. This could be having far reaching consequences.
The fact that they refuse to get certified / conduct any independent rigorous testing (like in NSF/ANSI certification) should have clued you in.
"We also cut open a pair of Black Berkey filters to see how they are constructed and to look for evidence that, as Berkey marketing claims, they contain “at least” six different filtering elements. We found that though the Berkey filters are larger and denser than filters from Brita and 3M Filtrete, they appear to share their filtration mechanisms: activated charcoal impregnated with an ion-exchange resin."
Granted, I was not aware of the certification stuff and I suppose that could mean some of their claims are misleading, but I've been very happy with their product.