This is sourced from Lonelyplanet and to my judgment this means tap water is drinkable in larger towns, while it's not in smaller towns in general.
This is not the same across the world, in countries like Switzerland, for example, you can drink the tap water virtually anywhere, while in some African countries this is not even true for the capital cities.
Good point, thanks, I missed that! TBH I need to brush up on GDPR law. FYI The website itself is not using any cookies, but GA and the Crisp chat are using them.
That's indeed interesting! Chlorine in the tap water seems to be one of the major factors why people buy bottled water, even though otherwise it might be perfectly healthy.
Yes I am using Awesomplete with some custom CSS and loading the autocomplete results on page load (I figured that's more performant in my case than loading it on each keystroke).
That's interesting, I'll look into that! Sparkling water might be indeed a reason why people buy bottled water, although there are household solutions for that as well.
You are right, I should have specified that tap water quality doesn't include the taste of it.
Apart from that Belgium tap water is perfectly safe to drink! I don't know specifics about the tap water in Belgium but something as simple as a carbon filter removes Chlorine and a lot of the bad taste!
I have been to Belgium before, to Brussels and Leuven, as far as I remember I liked the tap water better in Leuven, but that's just anecdotal. What I want to say with that is that tap water usually varies from area to area.
Indeed, just looking at the data on a country-level misses a lot! I am working on providing city-level data, which by the way is substantially harder as the data for most places is hidden deep on some government websites as a PDF, sometimes outdated, sometimes not available at all!
You are right, that's one thing I missed. Water bottle prices are determined on a country-level (I assume average bottle prices are higher in Moscow, I should show them ideally on a city-level) and I'm assuming people are buying 1.5L bottles for simplicity's sake. I am planning to provide a calculator soon to add more flexibility to the savings calculations.
For the map itself, Numbeo is not the primary source, that would be the WHO data, which is weighted 3 times more than the data coming from Numbeo to put an emphasis on a more reliable data source.
The cost-saving from not drinking bottled water is not necessarily dependent if the water is drinkable or not, as water filters are widely available and can offer substantial savings -> https://home.howstuffworks.com/save-money-with-water-filter1... The prices are taken from Numbeo and are the average prices for 1.5L bottles. I am aware this is not a perfect calculation method, I am planning to add a cost-saving calculator soon which will offer more flexibility.
Regarding the reputable source of information, you are right. Country-level data can never be a good decision-tool to chose if you can drink tapwater somewhere or not. It has to happen on an area-basis and include scientific reports, which are hard to get as of 2020 as there is no single source/database/API for that, except for very few countries (including the US and Austria), I'm working on that and I'll try to improve the UI so it reflects that one should check the water quality in the area of interest rather than the country itself.
Thanks for your thoughts! I'll try and make it easier to "explore the world" as you said, definitely going to remove the "zoom in". I initially tried to keep the data shown on the map compact to keep the page load time reasonable, I'll see what I can do!
That's a good point, I think it very much depends on the area you are in, that's why I added sub-pages for each country, e.g. https://www.iswatersafetodrink.in/germany/Munich. Although to be fair they are still lacking serious data, I'm working on that!
The data sources are linked on the website. I plan to add scientific reports on water-levels soon on a city-level.
I want to raise awareness on how saving money and the environment often comes hand in hand when it comes to drinking water. For most people around the globe drinking straight tap water or using a water filter is a better solution than giving money to bottling companies like Nestlé!
I'd like to monetize this by either adding affiliate links to water filtration systems. Hope this helps! I think plastic pollution is one of our greatest challenges right now and I’d like to contribute to fixing that.
This is not the same across the world, in countries like Switzerland, for example, you can drink the tap water virtually anywhere, while in some African countries this is not even true for the capital cities.