£1 buys 1000 litres of tap water. Or one bottle of the ionised variety
Diners are buying a new version of ordinary water for £1 a litre, 1,000 times more than it would cost if it came out of a tap.
Saf, a vegan restaurant in the Whole Foods department store in Kensington, London, uses a machine to turn ordinary mains supply into ionised water, which it serves in re-usable glass bottles. According to one of Saf's founders, Joe McCanta, the result is a highly alkaline water healthier than other waters and acidic drinks such as coffee, tea and alcohol. Saf in Kensington, as well as its forerunner in Shoreditch, London, sells an initial litre of ionised water for £1, although diners can request more bottles for free.
By comparison, 1p buys 10 litres of tap water from Thames Water, 99.9 per cent of whose water meets European and national standards.
Coca-Cola was forced to withdraw its Dasani water in 2004 after derision greeted the news that it was little more than treated mains water from Thames Water in Sidcup. That mishap drew parallels with an episode of the BBC comedy Only Fools and Horses in which the main character, Del Boy played by David Jason, bottled "Peckham Spring Water" from the tap in his high-rise flat.
Despite acknowledging that some people would inevitably be unimpressed with his product, Mr McCanta insisted the fee for his water – which he described as a "service charge" to cover the cost of the ionising machine and carbon filters – was good value.
Costing £1,200, the ionising machine charges the mains water in two chambers, before the more alkaline water is passed through a carbon filter, which removes chlorine and other chemicals, while retaining fluoride and minerals. Diners may also order free tap water, although the benefits of the pH 10 ionised water will be explained to them.
"A number of sustainable restaurants are charging £1 for a bottle of filtered water but it's not really doing anything," Mr McCanta said.
"I can see why people think it is a scam but it's something that's an option, we don't push it and we have a lot of information to back up why it's different to the filtered option."
While restaurants have been selling bottled water for years, the sale of filtered or otherwise treated tap water is part of a trend that is re-inventing ordinary mains or spring water as a life-affirming elixir that, it is usually hinted, bestows extra health benefits. Indeed, far from being on the way out, the bottled market is thriving.
After a couple of years when sales fell due to the recession, bad weather and environmental concerns, the amount of bottled water drunk by Britons rose by 1.4 per cent to just over 2 billion litres last year, according to market researchers Zenith.
Natural mineral waters such as Perrier and Evian take the lion's share of the market, 61 per cent, followed by spring water on 27 per cent.
Flushed by the industry's recovery, Zenith estimates sales will rise by 12 per cent to 2.3 billion litres by 2014.
drive from www.independent.co.uk