It is true that Brita water filters are quite popular among people who are sensitive about the quality of water that they useA big reason for their popularity is because, compared to other water treatment alternatives, they are quite cheap to buy.

The question is: Are they really cost effective? In other words, taking into account their total cost of ownership in relation to their effectiveness of removing pollutants from out tap water, are they really better than their competition?

There two types of Brita water filters now availableOne is a faucet filter and the other is the pitcher pour through type.

Cost

First, let's talk about the cost of ownership, which includes both the upfront cost to buy as well as the maintenance cost, i.ethe money you spend on cartridge replacement throughout the filter's lifetime.

As for upfront cost, as I already mentioned it is relatively quite lowJust to give you an indication, a Brita pitcher costs about $25, while the faucet filter type has a tag price of around $35In comparison, for a high quality home water filtration system you might have to pay upfront about $130.

However, when we consider the ongoing cost, then it's a different storyAs for the pitcher type, each filter cartridge costs about $8 each and has to be replaced every 10 gallons of water and that makes the cost per gallon about $0.25The faucet type cartridge costs about $20 and lasts for 100 gallonsThat makes cost per gallon to be around $0.20.

Comparing these figures to the corresponding costs that other leading manufacturers of water filtration systems publish, you will see that the ongoing costs per gallon range from as low as $0.09 up to maximum of about $0.15.

Now, let's do some math: If we say that the an average four-member household drink about 2 gallons of water per day, then in one year the total drinking water consumption of this household will be 730 gallonsPutting all our figures (initial costs and cost per gallon) for Brita water filters on the one side and those of another water filtration system on the other side as given above, then it is estimated that in about eleven months to a year's time of daily use, the cost of ownership will be equal.

This means that, after the first year (maximum) of use has elapsed, it will become more expensive to use Brita water filters than to use its leading competitors.

Effectiveness

When comparing effectiveness, i.ehow many pollutants they can remove and how efficiently they can do that, Brita water filters are clearly outperformed by the competition.

Let's take chlorine, the widely used disinfectant which has been linked with cancer and atherosclerosis, the primary cause of heart diseaseIn their performance sheets, Brita manufacturer claims 99% removal of chlorine for the faucet type, while only 75% percent for the pitcher typeIn comparison, all the competitors of Brita claim 95% and above.

However, as far as the very harmful by-products of chlorine are concerned, the Brita manufacturer states that neither of the products is able to remove themIn contrast, all the competition brands claim the opposite for their products.

The same holds for VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds), while as cysts and cryptogiardia (common pathogens) cannot be removed by the Brita pitcher type.

In general, the Brita faucet type filter performs better than the pitcher typeHowever, when compared with the competition across all known pollutants, the faucet type still exhibits no better than average performance.

To conclude, it is clear that, while the Brita water filters seem attractive due to their low upfront cost, they are not so competitive in the long runEspecially, when you consider that they are underperformers for the purpose that you bought them in the first place, that is purifying your water!

If you are serious about choosing a high quality, cost effective water filtration system, visit my website to see what I personally recommend.

Sources : Accessory Online