Why do people believe that bottled water is better than tap water?

People may or may not have started out believing bottled water is better than tap water. However for >20 years now in the US, they've certainly been marketed to that way and consumption patterns suggest it worked.

In 1975, Americans hardly drank bottled water, just one gallon of bottled water per person per year on average. By 2005, it had grown to ~26 gallons per person per year (1). By 2012, touching 30 gallons per person per year (see figure below from 2), it had become the veritable 'superstar of the beverage industry' (3).

The US sociologist, Andrew Szasz offers an intriguing explanation for the explosion in bottled water consumption in recent decades. Calling it the phenomenon of 'inverted quarantine', modeled after quarantine, he characterizes it as a distinct consumer response to widespread threats, both perceived and real. In classic quarantine, the collective community and environment are deemed healthy and some discrete sources within it present a spreadable danger. The community then protects itself by isolating that source, i.e., the diseased individual(s). This reduces the chance that others will get exposed and spread the infection. What happens when the threat is perceived to be everywhere? When the surrounding environment itself is perceived to be toxic, dangerous? According to Szasz, in the US, many healthy individuals responded by isolating themselves from their disease-inducing environment. Healthy and relatively affluent. Hence 'inverted quarantine', a walling-off response to threats perceived everywhere, gated communities perhaps the purest expression yet of such impulses.

Contrasting it with past social movements which brought about change through collective action, Szasz characterizes choices to buy bottled water, and 'organic', 'natural', 'non-toxic' food, household and personal hygiene products as ultimate expressions of individualism. 'Assembling a personal commodity bubble for one's body' (3), an attempt to shop one's way out of trouble instead of banding together collectively to change the status quo. In the case of bottled water, it started with a long-perceived suspicion of tap water. Long before the tragic Flint water crisis, US residents reported their tap water mistrust in survey after survey (3, Chapter 3, reference 5).

'The 1999 National Consumer Water Quality Survey found that “about three -quarters [of American adults] have some concern regarding the quality of their household water supply” and “almost half are concerned about possible health-related contaminants.” Two years later, a follow -up survey found those numbers had grown bigger still. Eight -six percent agreed they had “concerns about their water,” and “51 percent worried about possible health contaminants.'

In other words, widespread perception of toxic industrial and agricultural chemicals polluting tap water. Once the beverage industry understood this was driving consumer interest in bottled water, it set about explicitly marketing it as a safer alternative to assuage precisely these concerns. While bottled spring water brands pitched the pristine purity of their bottled water (see some examples below from 3, chapter 3)...

Odwalla

'ANCIENT FRESHNESS™—The Odwalla water you are now meeting fell on the land as rain, snow, and glacial melt 16,000 years ago. When it began its circular journey deep into the earth, ecosystems were in balance, the air was clear, the landscape wild and primeval. It carried this prehistoric purity underground, where it has remained totally isolated from environmental changes. —This water is as pure as the day it fell to Earth 16,000 years ago.78'

Fiji Water

'water that has never been touched by pollution or dirtied by pollution because it was created hundreds of years before the industrial revolution and it’s been locked under the earth in an aquifer in Fiji . . . at the very edge of a primitive rainforest, 1,500 miles away from the nearest continent. . . . Far from pollution. Far from acid rain. Far from industrial waste. . . . when it comes to drinking water, “remote” happens to be very, very good.79'

...Brands sourcing their water from the public water system focused on the 'hypertechnological efforts' (3) to render the hitherto toxic pure (see some examples below from 3, chapter 3).

Big Sur Water Company

'goes through a carbon filter . . . then [it is] put through a vapor compression™ processor . . . then through a 1 micron . . . paper filter . . . [finally,] As the water then goes toward the filler, superoxygen in the form of ozone (O3) is injected into the water to assure our water will remain in a pure state after it is bottled.81'

Ionic

'The process used to purify and produce Aqua CoolR Pure Bottled Water involves the use of The Ionics ToolboxSM of technologies [that ToolboxSM has in it: Electrodialysis Reversal, Reverse Osmosis, Ultrafiltration, Adsorption] to obtain the complete removal of all dissolved and undissolved materials from the source water. The resulting highly pure water is then remineralized with a specific “menu” of minerals selected for taste and fortification.82'

Once such relentless, focused marketing succeeded and how (see an eyebrow-raising example below from Wikipedia), a virtuous positively reinforcing cycle came into existence. And it's a hard one to knock off. After all, the perceived threat is the subtle one of long-term consequences of ingesting low doses of 'toxic' pollutants present in tap water. Once beverage company marketers succeeded in convincing consumers of the superior safety of their product, it required less effort in expanding its appeal by pitching it to the health-conscious as a lifestyle choice. And thus, bottled water sales increase year on year.

Irony of choosing bottled water over tap water is it implicitly imbues beverage companies with saintly trustworthiness that may be just as unwarranted.

Bibliography

1. Beverage Marketing Corporation of New York, “News Release: Bottled Water Continues Tradition of Strong Growth in 2005,” April 2006, Consulting, Advisory Services, Trend Data and Market Reports for the Global Beverage Industry

2. Bottled Water Sales: The Shocking Reality. Peter Gleick, April 25, 2013.

3. Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves: Andrew Szasz: 9780816635092: Amazon.com: Books. Andrew Szasz, University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-believe-that-bottled-water-is-better-than-tap-water/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala