What are your options for clean drinking water and how do they rank?

There are many choices for drinking clean water and it’s easy to get confused as to what is the best choice. Here are some options:

Bottle water
Bottled water is not regulated in Canada. Although it might be purified, generally it is just tap water (not from a mountain stream) and is the most expensive choice when it comes to clean water. Bottled water also contributes enormously to landfill and is an environmental burden.

Pitcher system
There are a number of different pitcher water filters on the market and they do a pretty good job for the price. But they only generally use a charcoal filtering system which may improve the taste and alkalinity of the water but doesn’t remove major impurities like chlorine, heavy metals, fluoride and pharmaceuticals.

RO system
A good Reverse Osmosis (RO) system is effective at removing impurities such as arsenic, nitrates, sodium, copper lead and some organic chemicals and fluoride. Unfortunately it also removes the beneficial minerals in the process and leave water acidic.

Electric ionizers
The electrolysis process separates the constituents of the water into 2 parts – alkaline water for drinking and acidic water, which is useful for watering plants and cleaning. The filtering process also removes impurities and renders the water pure depending on the layers of filtration and number of plates the ionizer has.

Non-electric ionizers
These ionizers have a complex filtration system using different media to filter out impurities. Because it doesn’t use complex electronics, there is usually very little maintenance with these types of systems and they are much more affordable.

H2 ionizers
These ionizers represent the latest advances in water filtration technology. They infuse molecular hydrogen into the water which has been proven to have considerable benefits. They filter water to a high degree and come in electronic and non-electronic version.