Pepsi recently admits that their brand water Aquafina is nothing but purified tap water. It is not only embarrassing for this multi million dollar company but also can be a threat to their annual sales of bottled water.

Bottled water market is a growing everyday as people are becoming more concern about their health. It is almost a $46 billion dollar industry worldwide (according to year 2004 stats). Now, if your favorite brand of bottled water company tells you that they have been selling tap water for $1.50 to you the whole time, how would you feel?

In a press release Pepsi stated that “If this helps clarify the fact that the water originates from public source, then it’s a reasonable thing to do.” On the other hand, Coca-Cola, maker of Dasani and Nestle have no plans to labeling their water as tap water anytime soon.

The logic behind this statement and selling tap water under brand name is that consumers now a days prefer the best product for the cheapest price. Why a consumer will pay more than $1.50 for a liter of bottle water where they can get a liter of gasoline for cheaper price or get the water from you tap for free? Vice President of Nestle said “We have to be creative here, we’re selling water.”

There is no proof that bottled water is healthier than tap water in Canada, in fact the opposite is often true. In one study, published on The Archive of Family Medicine researches compared bottled water with tap water from Cleverland and found that nearly a quarter of the samples of bottled water had significantly higher levels of bacteria.

It’s not only in Canada, there are many other countries who do not abandon tap water. Some countries even use cheap and users friendly way to purify water (as for example boils water) than wasting money on buying bottled tap water.

This news was first published in CNN money on July 27th with title “Pepsi says Aquafina is tap water“. But do you think it reduced Aquafina bottle water sales for even 1%? Shame on us that we are still so stupid to buy tap water for $1.50.