HAD SAMUEL Taylor Coleridge's Ancient Mariner been around today he might have had to retract his paraphrased lament about water everywhere and not a drop to drink. Increasing concerns over the quality of tap water have made bottled H2O a US$35 billion (HK$272.3 billion) industry worldwide and the fastest-growing segment in the global beverage industry. Based on its current growth rate, the sales of bottled water will surpass those of milk, beer and coffee in the next few years.
And it's not just actresses, models and posers down at the gym who drink it. Although mineral-water snobbery is alive and well (San Pellegrino is now the eau du jour in Hong Kong's upmarket restaurants; Italian mineral water Lurisia enjoys cult status in Britain and in the United States), the boom for bottled water in the past decade has gone beyond fashion. It is now considered a basic rather than a luxury product by developed countries and even in the smallest retail outlets there are shelves devoted to different kinds of H2O. If the brand war isn't already raging in Hong Kong, the tap-versus-distilled-versus-mineral water battle certainly is.
But which is best for health? Are expensive bottled waters doing us any good, or are we falling prey to clever marketing? Evian, as mineral-water sceptics are quick to point out, is 'naive' spelled backwards.
Despite the seemingly endless varieties of H2O, there are three categories in Hong Kong: tap, distilled and mineral water, the latter an umbrella that includes everything from purified tap water with added minerals to top-of-the-range natural spring waters from France.
According to the Water Supplies Department, Hong Kong has one of the safest tap flows in the world, complying chemically and bacteriologically with World Health Organisation (WHO) standards. It is soft water, has low to moderate mineral content and is low in organic matter.
About 80 per cent of Hong Kong's water comes from Dongjiang's East River; the rest is collected from local rainfall. It is stored in reservoirs before being pumped to local water-treatment works for purification, filtration and treatment with chlorine and lime to remove bacteria. No minerals are specially added, apart from fluoride to minimise dental decay.
