Drinking Tap Water When Traveling – Safe and Eco-Friendly

Water, while you’re travelling, is one of the key resources that every traveler needs.  Most travelers will resort to bottled water in South East Asia, Central America and South America.  We changed our travel habits to drink tap water while travelling and as a result save on average US$550 a year just on drinking water. Drinking bottled water while travelling is generally viewed to be the safest way to travel, but it’s seriously environmentally unfriendly.  Here’s how we manage our drinking water and ensure its safe for our health AND reduces our plastic waste significantly.

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Travel Healthy and Drink 2 Litres of Water per Day

Health experts around the world state that you should drink at least 2 litres of water a day to stay healthy.  In Nepal, while trekking to Everest Base Camp, we upped this to 5 litres but needed it for the altitude.   Most of the time travelling, because we’re walking everywhere it’s not a problem and two litres seems like a small amount!

If you’re looking to buy a Filter Water Bottle – then check out our buying guide for the best Filter Water Bottles

We Drink Tap Water In Asia, Cuba, South America

We’ve made a conscious decision to change that for our future travels.  We are drinking tap water.   And I’m comfortable also, when we’re hiking, that we’ll fill our water bottles from streams and springs.

It’s not because I’ve developed a desire to send myself to an early grave or dice with whatever hasn’t been cleaned out of the water systems in Asia, South and Central America.  It’s because we’re using filter water bottles. 

Drinking Bottled Water While Traveling has a cost.

Here’s what it cost us to drink bottled water over the 424 days that I used to analyse our costs.

US$650 (GBP£507).  Each.  US$1.53 per day.  Each.  That’s GBP£1.20.  Each.  Every day.

Yeah, doing this analysis made me seriously, seriously think.

How to Drink Tap Water

We’re using a filter water bottle – it’s got a built-in filter that we can use with ALL freshwater sources.  When the filter is done, after it’s filtered about 1600 liters of water, we just replace it with a new one. 

Which Water Filter to Use

We did a LOT of research about which filter system to buy.  We discounted the ones that leak badly when they fall on their side.  We got rid of the ones that require a separate bag to filter the water through, as space is at a premium in my backpack. You can read our full reviews and comparisons in our guide to filter water bottles here.

Our Filter water bottle removes 99.9% of viruses, protozoa, anthrax and pathogens.  It is robust, but lightweight.  It doesn’t leak when it tips over.

UV Light for Tap Water

And because we’re cautious travelers we’re also carrying a rechargeable steripen. Great value for the environment and your budget.   We don’t believe that just a steripen is enough for safe drinking water, as there are likely to be bits in the water too, so we use a steripen along with a filter water bottle.

So after we fill up our filter water bottle from the tap, we give them 60 seconds of UV light to blast away problems that might be in the water.

Where is Tap Water Not Drinkable?

Tap water in Belize on the islands like Caye Caulker is NOT drinkable.

Not even with a filtering system.  On Caye Caulker in Belize, the tap water is very salty.  The Travel Tap  (and other filtering systems) doesn’t work so well with salt or brackish water, however, our accommodation (the lovely, quiet and reasonably priced Barefoot Belize) provided a gallon of drinking water for BZD$2.

If after our filter and zapping with the steripen the water tasted funny (happened once or twice), then we poured it out and bought a bottle instead, because we are cautious travellers.

Boiling Water When Traveling

We also carry a hot water boiler, that we acquired in Sri Lanka, which makes us coffee and tea for a fraction of the price of going to a café.  This is also our backup method of ensuring we have clean safe drinking water from the tap.   You can get prices on portable hot water boilers here.  They’re generally known as Travel Immersion Water Heaters

We use ours in the amazing GSI Outdoors mugs – and they’re big enough to cook a packet of noodles in! – find out where to get what we think is the Best travel mug ever.

Cost of Drinking Bottled Water

I took another look at two years of travel.  On this big trip we left the UK on May 7^th, 2014 and headed to Asia via Russia, Mongolia and China.  I’m using cost comparisons from NUMBEO to chart how much drinking water costs in various countries.

I’ve ONLY included costs where Numbeo has the cost of bottled water (which is why it doesn’t add up to all the countries we visited nor all the days we were travelling).  Here’s what it would have cost us for the number of days we spent in each of these countries.  I excluded Australia and New Zealand as we drank the tap water there.

I also took the assumption that we drank 2 litres of water per day in each of these countries (sometimes it was more sometimes less).  That’s what the UK’s NHS recommends, and as it happens I can only easily find the bottled water costs for 424 of the first two years we spent traveling.  It’s enough for a very compelling argument.

The cost comparison:  Drinking water from the tap versus bottled water

Here’s how much we’re paying for water now.

Cost of Travel Tap including filter (good for 1600 litres of water): US$34.53 (£26.95) We have one each.  New filters cost around GBP£20. > Get A Price for a ‘Filter Water Bottle NOW

Cost of Rechargeable Steripen (good for endless litres of water):  US$83 (£65) – we share this.  Check out prices of Steripens now.

Let’s assume for the purposes of comparison if we’d bought these when we set out and used them for the 424 days above.

Our costs for drinking water would have been US$76.17 per person over the 424 day period – making the assumption that we drink 2 litres a day each.

That’s US17cents a day.  Or 14 pence a day. 

If we’d used our Filter Water Bottle and Steripen for these 424 days alone, we would have saved more than US$570 (GBP£448) in 18 months.  EACH.  And there would have been less 2-litre bottles each rolling around in a landfill. 

More Travel Tips from ASocialNomad

• Drinking Tap Water While Traveling
• How to Get Proof of Onward Travel

Final Words on Drinking Tap Water Safely

It’s not just the cost savings that we’re thrilled with.  Anyone who’s spent any time in Asia, Central America or indeed near the ocean will despair of the number of waste plastic drinks bottles.  So save your budget and save the planet and at least get a reusable water bottle, think about an integral filter and a steripen.

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