You can technically bring an empty bottle of water or container and fill it up inside of the airport.
Your options would typically be a water fountain, bathroom sink or asking a bar tender to fill it up. Typically if you go the bar tender route you may end up tipping them so you don't escape some cost there.
I've also heard you can bring a frozen water bottle. The idea there is if it were a dangerous liquid then it wouldn't freeze so you're allowed to bring it. The hard part would be ensuring it stays fully frozen while waiting on line.
But if you bring your own water then you wouldn't have the privilege of spending $4 for a single bottled water[0] at an airport vendor.
Sounds like the common ground there is profits come before anything else.
[0]: You could also bring your own empty water bottle and ask one of the bartenders to fill it up which is what I usually do and then drop them a $1 tip.
I've yet to step foot in an airport that didn't have water fountains, and won't let you take an empty reusable bottle through security. There's no need to buy bottled water.
> Filtered water is provided for free at 100 "hydration stations," where flyers can top up glass or metal bottles.
I'm glad to see this. My local (large, international) airport still hasn't upgraded its water fountains yet, forcing me to awkwardly refill my big water bottle from a tiny spout emitting a variable trickle.
Most airports I frequent have water bottle fountains now that dispense cold, filtered water into your bottle for you. Just bring a reusable bottle or dump your water from a disposable bottle.
In most of the airports (if not all) that I have been lately, there are water refilling stations, usually close to the restrooms or after you pass through the security checkpoint.
I usually pass security with my plastic bottle empty, and then refill it with those machines.
I don’t know if it’s different in the US, but here in Europe you can bring water bought after going through security. I think it’s more a means to make people buy things at the airport at inflated prices.
In the UK the airport 'news'agents now have entire walls of refrigerated bottled water.
There is no law in the UK requiring airports to provide free potable water to the public, so at around $3 per bottle this is an extremely lucrative consequence of security regulations.
Compared to that revenue, selling magazine is old hat!
* I am always delighted at the provision of water fountains in US airports. O'Hare even has ones specifically designed for filling bottles!
> Some things are unavoidable (like flights, airports etc.)
You can "take your own water with you" for those, for the amount that it matters to this discussion. It's not going to be literally your own water — generally speaking, TSA will force one to dump "dangerous" water into a giant trash bin in the middle of the checkpoint¹ — but you can normally refill the bottle once inside the secure area from a water fountain. Now … it might be tap, unfiltered, the local jurisdiction might be bad at water, IDK. But it's not quite an entirely lost cause.
Specifically, an empty reusable water bottle can traverse the security checkpoint. (We own some mostly non-plastic ones, too.)
¹comically, we were once forced to discard water that came from within the secured zone at the checkpoint.
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