Water Bottle & Drink Bottles Comparison Shopping Guide Australia

I’m not quite sure how Sydney Water managed to trademark the word TAP, but they’ve done it, with a nifty little marketing campaign to get people to drink tap water.

There’s a video on the website asking people how much they’d pay for the bottled water they were sampling in the street. Most people were surprised that they were drinking tap water. According to the Tap Sydney website, tap water costs less than 1 cent per litre. I was astounded to see that a lot of people would have been prepared to pay $3-$4 for a litre of the water they were drinking. More money than sense!!

While I’m a strong advocate for drinking tap water, for health reasons, I won’t go so far as to push people to drink large amounts straight from the tap. Depending on where you live and how close you are to outlets where flouride & chlorine is added, your water may or may not taste nice. I know that in our own home, we have a strong chlorine taste in our water, so I will always use a water filter and then fill up a reusable water bottle to take with me on my travels.

While there are plenty of fancy filters and drink bottles on the market, for those on a budget, it can still be done cheaply. Brita filters are cheap and BPA Free, and budget drink bottles can be purchased from any supermarket in the country.

To filter water directly in your bottle, Brita have the Fill & Go bottle, so you can filter on the go for approx $10 and are usually available from Coles, K-Mart and anywhere Brita is sold. The Camelbak Groove is a more high-end product that does a similar thing, prices starting from $39.95 and 321 Water make a 500ml Plunger for those who prefer to filter their water and then pour it in to a glass or use the screw lid on top of the bottle, $39 for thso one.

When first reading the headline of the following story – Marque restaurant charges diners $5 for filtered tap water, I was ready to start a giant rant at the outrage and greed of the head chef / business owner. However, when I read the story, I was pleasantly surprised.

He has chosen to ditch bottled water from the restaurant and invested $6,000 in an Italian made water filtration system that also chills and carbonates the water. It’s a $5 ‘all you can drink’ policy and is saving the environment.

Bravo Marque Restaurant.

It’s going to be a slow battle, but after the small town of Bundanoon in NSW Australia banned bottled water a while back and put themselves on the world map, Manitoba in Canada has done the same thing, following in the footsteps of Nova Scotia.

Australia has one town, Canada, two provinces. The Canadians seem to be leading the world in banning things that are bad for your health / the environment after their ban on BPA in baby bottles, yet Australia can’t manage to do the same. Read more about this and the story 60 Minutes ran on the dangers of bpa.

Read more at news.com.au

Regardless of what you’re drinking your water out of, here’s some handy tips to get the best health results from drinking water:-

1. Often when you’re hungry, it’s your body telling you you’re thirsty. If you don’t drink a lot of water, you could just be dehydrated.
2. You’re best to drink water at room temperature, especially while eating. Icy cold water plays havoc with your digestive system.
3. Don’t gulp large amounts of water while eating. Just take small sips. Again, this can disrupt the digestive system

Happy drinking!

In a move that follows the down of Bundanoon on the NSW South Coast, Canberra University has banned the sale of bottled water from it’s campus,believing it will stop the production and sale of 140,000 disposable water bottles per year. Instead, filtered bubblers just like those installed in Bundanoon are available and students are able to fill up their own reusable water bottle on site.

Read more.