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.
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.
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.
Well, above 'sparking water' was written, but 'mineral water' was meant. Sold in bottles and in restaurants and commonly purchased is indeed mineral water. What you can easily do at home is carbonize the water and make it sparkling, without, of course, the (real or imagined) health benefits and different taste of mineral water.
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.
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.
IDK, for me it looks more like a taste map than a quality map. In Spain northern regions have almost perfect water where mediterranean regions do have taste and more problems due the nature of their sources of water. I mean, it's not very useful. You'd drink tap water in my city or Madrid, you wouldn't like it in Barcelona, although you can.
