Tap water or bottled water at the office: cost per litre

Tap water and bottled water are both safe in a Flemish office, and the price gap is huge. A litre from the tap costs your company less than half a cent. A litre of natural mineral water from a 10-litre pack costs 1.20 to 1.35 euro. So you pay for a fixed composition and for convenience, not for safety. How we arrive at those amounts is explained further down.

Tap water or bottled water: which is checked more strictly?

Neither wins. They fall under two different laws, and each law guards something else.

Mains water must meet the limits of the European Drinking Water Directive 2020/2184 at the tap. The water company abstracts groundwater or surface water, treats it and measures it all the way to the customer. Natural mineral water follows Directive 2009/54/EC. That water comes from a protected underground source, is bottled at the source and may not be disinfected. The purity has to be there before the water goes into the bottle.

Bottled water is a catch-all term, by the way. It covers natural mineral water, spring water and sometimes plain treated water. The label says which of the three you are buying, and only the first has a recognised, stable composition.

99.56% compliant at the tap, 38 mg/l dry residue on the label

The Flemish Environment Agency (VMM) publishes the figures every year. In 2024, 99.56% of analyses at the tap met the quality requirements. That is a high score.

In July 2025 the consumer organisation Test-Aankoop had twenty tap water samples and thirty bottled waters analysed by a lab. In the tap water, the twenty measured PFAS stayed well below the 100 ng/l limit, with 18 ng/l in Ghent as the highest value. In the bottled water the lab found, with one tiny exception, none of the 44 PFAS it looked for. TFA, a substance that does not officially count as PFAS, did show up in both groups: in 19 of the 20 tap samples and in 18 of the 30 bottles.

In the glass:

The SPA Reine figures come from the product sheet. Those for your own tap are on the website of De Watergroep, Farys, Pidpa or Water-link, per municipality.

How much does a litre cost at the office?

Back to the litre. We ran the numbers for ten employees who each drink 1 litre per working day, over 21 working days. That is 210 litres a month. All amounts exclude VAT.

Where do those numbers come from? For the tap we took the drinking water rate for non-household customers, which according to callmepower.be (updated on 25 May 2026) runs from 1.79 euro per cubic metre at Water-link to 4.85 euro at Farys. Wastewater charges come on top. Test-Aankoop works with an all-in household average of 0.0065 euro per litre, and even then 210 litres cost you 1.37 euro a month.

The rent of a mains-fed cooler is not a published price. Culligan and BRITA do not publish prices for their machines, you get them on quotation. The range of 25 to 65 euro a month is therefore our own assumption to make the calculation work: replace it with the figure from your own quotation. The SPA Fountain costs 18.50 euro a month for the countertop model, as stated on the product page we read on 11 October 2026. For the 10-litre SPA Reine packs, we read 13.49 euro each that same day at office supplier Bruneau, or 11.95 euro from three packs. The product was listed as out of stock, though. So ask your drinks supplier for a price as well.

The outcome is blunt. In this calculation, mineral water from packs costs four to twelve times more per litre than filtered mains water from a rented cooler, and over a year that makes a difference of 2,400 to 3,300 euro for this office. If the invoice is all you look at, the discussion ends here.

Is bottled water healthier than tap water?

No, there is no evidence for that. Both are drinkable and checked, each under its own directive.

Lead sits in the building's pipes, not in the network

In the VMM figures for 2024, lead is the parameter most often above the limit: 2.18% of lead measurements at the tap exceeded 10 micrograms per litre. Under Drinking Water Directive 2020/2184, that limit drops to 5 micrograms from 12 January 2036. The water company does not deliver lead. It comes from old indoor pipes, and those belong to the owner of the building.

If nobody knows what the pipes in your building are made of, have a sample analysed before any machine comes in. Check this before you pick the tap or a mains-fed cooler as your water point:

• the construction year of the building and the material of the indoor pipes, to ask the owner or the managing agent;
• the water quality in your supply area, on your water company's website;
• how long the water stands still, because after a weekend or a holiday you let the tap run first;
• which filter is in the cooler and which substances it stops according to the supplier;
• who replaces the filter and how often, with the price.

Three offices, three choices

If cost per litre is your only criterion and the pipes are fine, the tap will do. Legally too: the Belgian Code on well-being at work asks for drinkable water, not mineral water, as we explain in the piece on drinking water at work. A few carafes and a fridge do the job.

If you want chilled or sparkling water and your team drinks a lot, a machine on the mains is the logical step. BRITA VIVREAU and Culligan are the familiar names there, and the ranking of mains-fed water coolers puts them side by side. Convert your own quotation to a price per litre (0.12 to 0.31 euro for ten people under our assumption), and read the contract term.

That leaves the office with no water connection in the right spot, with pipes nobody wants to vouch for, or with a team that wants a water whose composition is on the label and stays the same from the first pack to the last. There you end up with a machine that is not on the mains: a classic bottle cooler with large bottles, or a machine with packs such as the SPA Fountain with SPA Reine. Neither needs a plumber. The limits of the SPA Fountain: the machine only gives still water, you order the packs separately, and 21 packs of 10 kilos a month (210 litres divided by 10) need storage space and someone to lift them. And in our calculation you pay 1.28 to 1.44 euro per litre for it, the highest amount of the three solutions. The full comparison of machines, bottle coolers included, is in mains-fed water cooler or packs.

Sources

Consulted on 11 October 2026. Amounts per litre and per month are our own calculation based on these sources and the assumptions in the text (10 people, 1 litre per working day, 21 working days, mains-fed cooler rent of 25 to 65 euro).

• Flemish Environment Agency (VMM), drinking water quality 2024 (99.56% compliant, 2.18% of lead measurements above 10 µg/l): vmm.vlaanderen.be
• Directive (EU) 2020/2184 on water intended for human consumption (lead limit 10 µg/l, 5 µg/l from 12 January 2036): eur-lex.europa.eu
• Directive 2009/54/EC on natural mineral waters: eur-lex.europa.eu
• Test-Aankoop, water test of 17 July 2025 (PFAS, TFA, number of samples): test-aankoop.be
• Test-Aankoop, price of mains water per region, 25 July 2025 (0.0065 euro per litre): test-aankoop.be
• Drinking water rates per water company, updated on 25 May 2026 (1.79 to 4.85 euro per m³): callmepower.be
• Composition of SPA Reine, product sheet: psinfoodservice.com
• SPA Fountain, product pages (18.50 euro a month for the countertop model): countertop model and freestanding model
• Bruneau, product sheet SPA Reine 10 litres (ref. 793-286), price read on 11 October 2026 (13.49 euro, 11.95 euro from three packs)