The water that I drink at home is not directly from tap water. I bought it at a nearby water refilling station. 4 gallons of water cost P28 (half-dollar). It comes in 2 kind of plastic containers: one rectangular one with faucet attached and one circular one that you put in water dispenser.

The internet is filled with scary information about tap water. They say tap water contains chemicals that can cause cancer. They say that pesticides used on farms and lawns near water sources leak to our bodies. They say water contains bacteria that produce water-borne diseases such as cholera and typhoid.

But all the sites that give these scary information end with offers of their products: home filtration and purification systems. It makes me wonder if they didn’t manipulated the facts a bit so that people will be scared to drink tap water and buy their products instead. I wasn’t able to find any article about tap water that is not written by people who have interest in selling their products. Well, that’s the internet.

Is Manila tap water safe to drink? If only I can find dependable facts: people who are actually drinking from their tap water, then I’ll do away with my purified water from the water refilling station. It is cheap, yes, but aren’t we paying for water bills so that we can have potable water at home?

This is another reason why TODAY is the best time to go green: because greening means having clean water bodies that are the sources of our tap water. How? We’ll tackle the way in my next articles.