Brita Maxtra or Aqua Optima

snl

I am looking to buy a new water filter jug. Which is better in term of quality i.e. remove more limescale etc.?

Brita is more expensive, does it worth paying more for it?

Thank you in advance.

santer_2

If the sainsbury's offer is still on, Brita are cheaper at the moment

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=41169196&postcount=1

snl

Thanks. But they ran out of Brita at my local Sainsbury's store.

How does Aqua Optima compare to Brita Maxtra?

Thanks.

Lugh_Chronain

I have a Aqua Optima jug and I'm fairly satisfied with it. The water here (London) is quite hard and find these appear to work fine for me.

Not sure where the cheapest place is for the filter jugs though. I tend to keep an eye on HotUKDeals by searching their site for best deals on filter cartridges. You could also try searching the MegaShopBot.

abugintheground

You can get an aqua optima jug for £5.49 inc. p&p on ebay at the moment, includes one filter. Not bad huh?

I'm not allowed to post links as a new user. Just do a search for aqua optima it'll be there - the item no. is 150585928256

(I'm not spamming or advertising, I just bought one and thought it would be good to share)

While I'm here, does anyone know if you can get 'compatible' non oem cartridges for these filters?

thx

Lugh_Chronain

abugintheground, the Aqua Optima cartridges are fairly cheap in comparison with Brita. Argos and Amazon tend to have fairly good offers which worth checking from time to time, it's definitely worth keeping an eye on HotUKDeals as I've mentioned above as prices can drop to as little as £22 for 12x two month filter cartridges.

And while we're on the subject, the only dilemma I’ve experienced with the cartridges is with recycling. I contacted my local council recycling department recently who told me that Brita are the only filter company to recycle its cartridges. They also mentioned that they had had a look at the Aqua Optima website but couldn’t see anything about recycling cartridges.

Anyway, if I do spot any compatible non oem cartridges I'll try and remember to post my find on here first.

santer_2

Brita have 3 for £9:66 at the moment, online and instore

http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/groceries/index.jsp?bmUID=1302149420238

lexuslass

I highly recommend the Brita Maxtra!!

Ours is brill....... and the water tastes nice!! it draws out a lot of limescale out of our extremely hard tap water!

The filters are more expensive than the others, but I tend to stock up when they are on offer (e.g. third off in sainsburys etc).

It tastes more like the bottled water you buy and you are not left with any metal taste like you do with some other filters!

HTH

Cubana48

I've just purchased the Aqua Optima cartridge and can say it performs as well as the Brita ones only cheaper.

In all honesty, I can't really afford the Brita filters, but at the end of the day you can take them to an Argos store for recycling (you have to check on Britas website which stores: brita.net/uk/promotion_recycling.html?&L=1)

Now are we going to keep talking about saving the planet, or actually do something about it. Mother nature cares little for talk. I'll just forego other things (£2 a month!! I think I can save that somewhere), and in the mean time contact Aqua Optima and put a little pressure on them to follow suit.

It's a lot of plastic to be throwing away every month into landfill where it'll sit for millenia slowly poisoning the water supply.

If you feel the same way, send a note to them: aqua-optima.com/index.php?action=menuitem&menuitem_id=244 on their contact page.

With enough customer pressure, with any luck we'll soon have the best of both worlds. Green and affordable......

~~Diane~~

I've got the Brita Maxtra and I'm very happy with it. We live in a very hard water area, the water is foul without filtering it first.

I bought 4 Maxtra cartridges for £10 last week (delivered Saturday) from Amazon. Very good value considering I was paying just under £6 for 1 in Morrisons.

Edit: Just checked Amazon and they are now £12.49 for 4, still a good deal.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/BRITA-MAXTRA-Water-Filter-Cartridge/dp/B000QG7AJM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309776182&sr=8-1

Cubana48

This is the response I got back from Aqua Optima. I shall be making it clear that I won't be buying their product based on the fact you can't recycle it (unlike Brita), but I appreciated the fast response and that they welcome feedback on the issue and it's clear they've thought about the issue. I encourage others to contact them with their thoughts................


"Thank you for your enquiry about recycling of our products which has been forwarded to me by my colleague. As you are aware, this is an issue that we are continually looking at. We obviously feel that the concept of filtered, point-of-use, water is significantly better for the environment than the bottled water option. There is a lot of data to support that case and I trust we both agree on that point. The filter obviously has the benefit of taking low levels of pesticides and herbicides out of the public water system and hence out of the receiving waters and wider environment.

However, you are quite right in pointing out that recycling options are available for certain components of our filters. It is not something that we are ignoring but we need to be absolutely certain that any recycling option has clear and defined benefits over the status quo. We are aware that Brita have a recycling option in certain retail outlets but it is not clear what portion of their filters are actually recycled or how environmentally beneficial this is.

You will be aware that there are a lot of varied, and sometimes competing, factors to take account of when considering the overall environmental benefit to any option. For this particular case, the following factors need to be considered:

· The energy and logistics involved in returning and collecting the recycled filter cartridges
· Once collected, what is the process for breaking the filters and separating the component mix (carbon, resin, plastics, meshes)
· The collected components then need to be transported to a separate facility. For Brita, we believe this is located in Germany .
· Once separated, what is the best method of regenerating the carbon. Steam regeneration is an extremely high temperature, energy intensive process.
· The end products of a carbon regeneration process are the clean carbon of course and the waste stream which contains all of the original contaminants. Depending on what you then do with that waste stream dictates where these contaminants eventually end up.
· We feel that the regeneration process only serves to release contaminants back into the air (through a stack) or effluent stream. These of course can be recaptured by activated carbon media but the overall benefit is arguable because a tremendous amount of energy has been expended to get to this point and the net result is essentially the same i.e. contaminants held on carbon media.
· In order to re-use the regenerated carbon as a food grade product requires that the carbon undergoes further cleaning and preparation. Again, this is a large energy consumption.

I welcome your views on this as we are continually looking at all options and all input and feedback is therefore welcome. Some of these investigations are of course technically and commercially sensitive but I would like to reassure you that we take the issue very seriously. I hope that my explanation above at least outlines some of the wider issues that we need to consider.

Please feel free to reply directly to me and I will then keep you updated on any further developments."