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Everyday Cheapskate: Tap water: Good for your health and your wealth

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when it happened, but sometime over the past decade or so, the general population of this country formed a belief that bottled water is better than tap water — and safer and healthier. It’s pretty ingenious, if not shocking, how bottled water suppliers created an entire industry by convincing millions of people to pay between 240 and 10,000 times more for water in a bottle than getting it from the supply we’re already paying for in our homes. TAP WATER IS CHEAPER These days, a 16-ounce bottle of “spring” water goes for about a dollar, which works out to about $8 a gallon, twice the cost of milk and on par with bottled soft drinks. Home delivery of water in those great big, heavy bottles is less per gallon but still costs around $40 a month, according to online averages. How does that compare with the water coming out of your kitchen tap? The average household cost for town water in the U.S. is 66 cents per cubic meter, which is 265 gallons, or 4,240 8-ounce glasses…

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