It depends on the bottled water, to be fair. I suppose it also depends on where the tap is located.

Try distilling 4 litres (1 gallon) of tap water and see what is left behind.

Now repeat that experiment with high quality bottled water.

In my city (developed first world country) the tap water contains toxic repugnant chemical sludge.

So you're saying that bottled water also contains PFAS?

A lot of bottled water is literally packaged tap water. Anyway https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00431... and https://www.consumerreports.org/water-quality/whats-really-i...

If you look at your bottled water, a whole lot of it has labels on it that say something like "comes from a municipal source". It's tap water sold at a 5000% markup.

Many years ago I knew someone who managed a bottled water plant. They didn’t use tap water, they had a very deep well pulling from an aquifer. They then filtered the heck out of it, and then added back in a very small, proprietary mix of minerals.

Just because it's from a municipal source doesn't mean that it isn't filtered subsequently.

It also doesn't mean that it isn't way better than the local tap water in many, many places.

People don't buy bottled water that tastes bad, and it's pretty likely to taste worse than your local water if it's worse for you than your local water.

>It's tap water sold at a 5000% markup.

it's tap water, processed, and bottled.

The processes often include extra filtration and cleaning methods that the individual corporate groups dictate.

I'm not trying to suggest that bottled water is some tremendous value compared to municipal water, but let's not pretend that the markup comes with nothing.

I mean, yes, the bottle itself is a source of microplastics.

Microplastics is a different conversation.