Staying hydrated when travelling is important, and it’s not always easy to tell whether the water supply is safe. Here, Travel Tomorrow provides a lowdown by blending an analysis undertaken by AllClear Insurance with two metrics from the 2024 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) prepared by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy.
Northern European countries dominate the EPI thanks to a combination of pristine water sources and strict regulations governing water sanitation practices. Estonia tops the list of nations with the best tap water, with its capital city, Tallinn, taking its supply from Lake Ülemiste. Estonia’s water treatment processes mean that the supply remains among the purest in the world, despite a plane crashing into the lake in 2010 and leaking over a ton of fuel.
Flavour versus purity
Luxembourg comes second, while Germany takes third spot, Finland just misses the podium in fourth, and the United Kingdom rounds out the EPI top five. But this is where things get interesting because in terms of flavour, the UK actually comes first in Europe in AllClear’s survey, which relies on evidence from over 2000 Reddit posts about the taste of water all over the world.
To be precise, it is one particular region of the UK that is lauded by Redditors for its H2O. That lucky place is Scotland. Its Highland springs and lochs provide not only a prized whisky ingredient but mean it is the most mentioned place in Europe for tasty water, and the second-most celebrated in the world.
New York and beyond
Scotland is beaten in the Reddit world water stakes only by, of all places, New York City. New York gets its water supply from the Catskills Mountains, which, anecdotal evidence claims, is the reason why the city that never sleeps has such good pizza and bagels.
Outside New York, it is the west of the US that reigns for water flavour. Redditors’ tastebuds are tickled by the water in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Lake Michigan and Colorado, which has the Rocky Mountains to thank.
Back in Europe, if we cross-reference the Reddit top ten with the European-dominated EPI list, then Germany, Norway, Switzerland, and Austria must all be given credit. They appear on both lists, with Reddit reports of good flavour and EPI recognition for water protection and filtration standards. Other countries not already mentioned from the EPI top ten are Sweden and Denmark.
At the other end of the scale, citizens in Afghanistan, Iraq, Madagascar, Eritrea and Bangladesh must endure the worst water quality in the world, according to the Yale measures. Infrastructure issues, a lack of wastewater treatment, pollution in the ground and surface water supply, and high levels of poisons such as arsenic and bacteria like E Coli are to blame.
