‘It is a far far better thing I do now than I have ever done…’ That was how I felt last week in Hastings drinking the local tap water, which basically tasted of mud. Trevon meanwhile has arrived back from a short trip to Helsinki raving about the tap water over there. His words for why it was so good was ‘the clarity!’ When I pressed him a bit more he decided on the alliterative ‘clear and cold and no chlorine’. So I did a bit of research. The water in Helsinki comes from a lake 120km north of the city, the intake point is 26m deep and 350m off shore and the water is transported to the city in the world’s longest continuous bedrock tunnel. The treatment process does indeed not use chlorine, relying instead on ozone, activated carbon and UV disinfection.

All of this discussion of tap water in the office made us think to ask our readers whether you have any examples of particularly good or bad tap water. Email info@ech2o.co.uk and we will print the best or, if there’s a lot of replies, put them onto a new web page.

Drinking tap water – a tale of two cities – Finland – ech2o newsletter snippet