It can be hard to live responsibly and make the best decisions ecologically and economically, for you personally and the rest of the world. This is especially true when you’re travelling. When you’re in a foreign country where you’re not entirely sure how things work, what the fastest, cheapest or safest way is, you make all sorts of mistakes and all those costly shortcuts to save yourself a momentary headache, usually leave a much larger carbon footprint.

If there’s one piece of wisdom we’d like to impart on you it’s this: Please drink the tap water.

Our favourite drink ever

Icelanders who are returning home after a longer stay abroad will usually celebrate by having a drink. Straight from the tap. We are of course biased but we think nothing gets close to our cold tap water, or "kranavatn" in Icelandic. This is also evident in our favourite brand drinks when travelling abroad which suddenly taste weird because they’re not made from the pure Icelandic water we’re used to.

What’s that smell though?

The problem is that because of the smell of our hot tap water, it’s understandable that your average tourist wouldn’t dare drink from those taps. But that’s a huge misunderstanding actually. Geothermal hot water and cold spring water are two very different things and travel to those taps via two entirely different channels. That unmistakable smell of the hot water in Reykjavík is from the sulphur. The geothermal water pumped hot from its sources in the ground is full of it and other minerals. Don’t drink that. The cold water on the other hand is spring water, intensely filtered through the ground before it’s brought into our homes. And lastly, Icelandic plumbing is on average very good.

Be responsible

While this blog is partly written just to toot our own waterhorn and share our amazing resource, perhaps the bigger incentive to getting our tourists to taste our water is to reduce consumption of bottle water, and as a result, reduce the amount of plastic in the world. A shocking 80% of plastic bottles are estimated to end up in either landfills or the ocean. In a country that prides itself of its untouched wilderness, its clean air and tasty tap water, drinking bottled water is quite the faux pas. Get yourself an economically friendly reusable water bottle and refill it at any tap around the country. If you need help finding your nearest public tap, just download the tap app.

Bottoms up!