Blind Taste Test: Holmdel Tap Water vs. the Brands

Holmdel’s Green Team held a blind water tasting at their January meeting in Township Hall. 

Three waters were tasted, side-by-side, in unmarked cups.

• Shorelands Water Co. tap water,
• Brita-filtered tap water
• Poland Spring bottled water. 

The results: 7 out of 10 people could taste little or no differences among the three kinds of water. 

Three tasters preferred Brita-filtered or Poland Spring to plain tap water. 

There is a growing movement nationally to “Take Back the Tap” to reduce the use of plastic, whose production wastes resources, and whose disposal creates problems in landfills and in the ocean.  Plastic in a landfill takes many hundreds of years to decompose. Green Team members want to do what they can to promote sustainability.

Four tap-happy team members said that they carry their own refillable water bottles. Janet Berk’s is stainless steel. She says she doesn’t buy bottled water “because it’s expensive and it’s a waste to consume plastic bottles.”  Tap water costs $1.46 for one person for a year. The same amount of filtered water costs $21.90, and bottled Poland Spring from Costco comes to $225.

 Environmental concerns motivate Scott Goldstein’s family too. Daughter Alexa decorates her refillable bottle with stickers from White Mountain where she has visited. Sons Zach and Michael use the standard water bottles for scouts and hikers. Scott points out, “Tap water has EPA standards for quality which are higher than the FDA’s standards for bottled water. The FDA requires daily water analyses and the publication of quality reports.”  Scott is also glad not to have to tote cases of water from the store.

Larry Fink, whose love for the environment is long-standing, says his family uses tap water “because of it's low cost, convenience, low environmental impact and great taste, especially in reusable stainless steel or BPA-free plastic bottles.”

Randy Goldberg’s boys prefer the taste of filtered water, so he had a filtering system installed in his home.  Randy turned away from buying plastic bottles because of his commitment to conserving non-renewable energy sources.  He says, “I found out that producing a bottle of water uses an amount of oil equal to 25% of the volume of water in the bottle.”

Pat Geller, another filtered tap water lamented, “One hundred million plastic water bottles end up in U.S. landfills every day, and it will take 700 years for those bottles to decompose.”

Green Team chair Betsy Wilson says, ”I encourage people to do their own taste comparisons, and think 'outside the bottle' for the environment’s sake.”