Drink from the toilet?

So I'm up late researching the problems associated with drinking bottled water. It's obvious that bottled water is bad for the environment. All that plastic takes a long time to degrade. But even for people who don't care too much about their giant carbon footprints, consider this:

Even when bottled waters are covered by the FDA's rules, they are subject to less rigorous testing and purity standards than those which apply to city tap water (see chart below). For example, bottled water is required to be tested less frequently than city tap water for bacteria and chemical contaminants. In addition, bottled water rules allow for some contamination by E. coli or fecal coliform (which indicate possible contamination with fecal matter), contrary to tap water rules, which prohibit any confirmed contamination with these bacteria. Similarly, there are no requirements for bottled water to be disinfected or tested for parasites such as cryptosporidium or giardia, unlike the rules for big city tap water systems that use surface water sources. This leaves open the possibility that some bottled water may present a health threat to people with weakened immune systems, such as the frail elderly, some infants, transplant or cancer patients, or people with HIV/AIDS.

If you're really interested you can read the full article here: http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/nbw.asp

Now consider how expensive bottled water is. If you bought a typical 20 oz water bottle from a vending machine for a dollar, you'd spend about 5 cents per oz. Now let's think about gasoline. Let's say gas is about $3 a gallon. 1 gallon = 128 oz. So, $3/128 oz is about 2 cents per oz. Bottled water costs more than twice as much as gasoline!

And speaking of gasoline, we used 17 million barrels of oil to manufacture plastic water bottles in 2006.

The cost of tap water: 0.00007 cents per oz.

Get a filter for your kitchen faucet. Get a cool reusable water bottle. Stop paying to drink from the toilet.