Bottled Water

Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t did bottled water about 6 years ago (first season) so ill just give you the run down of the main points:
SOURCES: http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/12/11/fun-facts-about-bottled-water/
http://your-water.net/bottled-water-facts.html
(since I was too bored to write some of it myself)
1) Consumption in the United States: “8.6 billion gallons of bottled water.” There are approximately 300 million people in the U.S., so it works out to about 29 gallons per person per year.
2) “The price of bottled water is up to 10,000 times the cost of tap water.”
3) Americans spend $4 billion per year on bottled water.
5) “It takes three times the amount of water to produce the bottle as it does to fill it.”
6) “The NRDC conducted a comprehesive four-year scientific study of 1,000 brands of bottled water. Incredibly, the results showed that one third of the bottled waters violated their own industry standards for water quality.”
7) “75% of the people chose the taste of New York City tap water over bottled water.”

Aslo:
Bottled water is no healthier than tap water
"In theory, bottled water in the United States falls under the regulatory authority of the Food and Drug Administration. In practice, about 70 percent of bottled water never crosses state lines for sale, making it exempt from FDA oversight.

On the other hand, water systems in the developed world are well-regulated. In the U.S., for instance, municipal water falls under the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency, and is regularly inspected for bacteria and toxic chemicals. Want to know how your community scores? Check out the Environmental Working Group's National Tap Water Database.

While public safety groups correctly point out that many municipal water systems are aging and there remain hundreds of chemical contaminants for which no standards have been established, there's very little empirical evidence that suggests bottled water is any cleaner or better for you than its tap equivalent."

Of course, that episode was some time ago and im not sure of the dates in some of these articles so if the way things are undertaken has changed id appreciate up to date info :)

Basically you pay too much, the water is more costly than the bottle. And I lol'd at penn and teller doing that water restaurant, those posers got owned.

That and getting the hippies to sign the petition banning dihydrogen monoxide (read: water) from use in everyday products lol.

Ever tried buying a water bottle?

I think its more along the lines of exploiting those who are like 'Oh crud, I forgot my water bottle today. Oh well, just buy another one'. They buy their own personal little bottle of water and then unconsiously recycle it or what have you. They get home and then the process begins again.

Depends...Because some places have unsanitary water systems like 3rd world countries, and people who are hyper-hygienic conscious so they buy bottled water for their personal reasons.

Tap water is fine for cooking or mixing juice, but otherwise I would drink bottled water. The taste of tap water can change depending on where you live and it's not always good, but bottled water is something you can rely on. Besides it not that expensive and it's convenient when your walking out the door in the morning.

The water here either tastes like hard water, or like water softener.

Though I typically don't drink water, I drink mixes(The powder stuff you mix with water), juice, or milk. I like my drinks to be slightly sweet.

If I want some drinking water, I usually buy the cheap jugs instead of the bottles.

I don't know about you but my tap water tastes like crap, I really need to buy one of those water purifiers or something. But yeah bottled water is just bullshit, it's something you can get for free and easily but the convenience of just buying it makes all of the lazy people go crazy. I'll admit I'm lazy but even I don't waste money on bottled water, UNLESS I'm somewhere and extremely thirsty and I'm on a long bike ride/walk or something like that.

The only time I ever buy bottled water is when I forget my own when I go out...

This is a valid point, but generally when talking about bottled water vs. tap water, we are talking about first world countries, where we have standards for municipal water supply, namely the United States. This country consumes a ridiculous amount of bottled water, despite there being clean and safe drinking water on tap almost anywhere you go.

But it's obviously different in countries where they don't have regulations or any oversight on the water supply, if there even is a municipal water supply. For places like that, though, better than bottled water is something like in this video:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/michael_pritchard_invents_a_water_filter.html

I never drink bottled water. Buy one of these to save money and, if you think about it, assist in decreasing plastic demand through plastic bottles.

I purchased one of those.

Occasionally, I'll purchase some Lime Perrier. I love a good sparkling, lime-flavored, mineral water.

If tap's water so great, then why did my late grandmother got kidney stones from it?

Filters may help, but in some areas, this stuff just doesn't help anymore.
Plus, tap water tastes like lighter blood around here. It all has this metallic taste.