August 9, 2008

Use a filter instead of buying bottled water.

Smithee on Consumerism Commentary recently wrote about bottled water : Bottled Water? What Was I Thinking? If you drink bottled water you might be spending a significant amount on water over the long term. You could save quite a bit of money by using a water filter system at home. Lets compare the two options:


Individual bottled water
I checked prices at Costco and Safeway. Costco had 24 count of 8oz bottled H2O water for $12.57 or 52¢ each. Safeway had a 6 pack for $2.50 or 41.6¢ each. So as an example, if you drank just one bottle of water a day and bought them for 40¢ each you'd be spending $146 annually.

Filtered water at home
Or you could get a filter system at home to filter your own water. There are a lot of different options for filters. The easiest/cheapest I think are the pitchers from Britta or Pur. I have had a Britta pitcher before and it works fine. Now I have a Britta filter that attaches directly to the tap on my kitchen sink. If your refrigerator has a water dispenser built in then it may have a filter in it as well. You can get a Britta filter 10 pack for $45.50. They have a pitcher for $11.99 If you get the pitcher and 10 pack of filters together on Amazon then they cut the price to $57.49 for the combo. Each filter handles up to 40 gallons of water or 2 months. So between the pitcher and the 10 pack of filters thats 400 gallons of filtered water for a total cost of $57.49. Thats about 14¢ per gallon. That would give you a 32 ounce serving of filtered water for about 3.5¢. Over a year if you drank 32 ounces a day that would equate to an annual expense of $12.78 if you used 40 gallons or more a month. Or worst case if you had to replace every 2 months then that would be about $34.49 per year. So you're you're looking about around $13-35 a year for filter replacement depending on how much water you use.

Using a water filter pitcher at home could save you $110 to $133 a year.
In addition to saving money you also reduce the amount of plastic that is wasted.


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