Are you one of the millions of citizens of Planet Earth that drink litres of bottled water every month? If so, what kind of bottled water are you drinking – Spring water, Artesian water, Mineral water, Carbonated water, pH-balanced water, or perhaps vitamin-enriched water?

With so many types of bottled water to choose from, the bottled water market is extremely lucrative, which also makes it very competitive. This, however, also opens the door for many less than reputable companies selling ordinary tap-water as something which is definitely not.

Some top water brands, for instance, was found to come from ordinary tap water. Other companies were exposed as being nothing more than filtered tap water; actually just purified tap water, and a report by beverage marketing company Canadean stated that two out of every five bottled waters are “purified” waters and not “sourced” waters.

Even bottled water that is sourced from a natural spring is not necessarily 100% pure, as Laura Pressley, Ph.D. from Austin, Tex. and the founder of Pure Rain bottled water, says that 90% of spring water contains fluoride, which is a known carcinogen as well as being linked to low thyroid function.

Bottled water can go through a number of treatments, including distillation, micron filtration, ozonation, ultraviolet light, and reverse osmosis (RO), which is the closest one can come to truly purified water as RO removes up to 90% of both chemicals and fluoride from the water. Unfortunately, RO is rather expensive and has such low yield returns that most water companies will not use that method.

The best method of ensuring that you are protecting both the eco-system from the millions of plastic water bottles that end up in landfills and your health is to invest in a mains water cooler that has a really good water filter that can filter out all pollutants fitted.