Posted on 03/14/2007 7:13:54 AM PDT by theBuckwheat
EUOBSERVER / FOCUS - Europeans are drinking more and more bottled water amid preoccupation with weight loss and cravings for emotional experiences like "naturalness," industry surveys show, but the water boom has an environmental cost and water marketing is not always what it seems.
European consumers drank 50.3 billion litres of bottled water in 2006 according to figures from industry analysts Canadean and Zenith International, with average market growth of 3.3 percent a year since 2000. To put things into perspective, the volume is more than two times the water in Lake Buttermere in the UK's Lake District.
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Europe's bottled water sector uses close to 1 million tonnes a year of oil-derived polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic. Some is recycled. But a lot is dumped in landfills or shipped to China to be dumped in landfills, with PET taking up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.
The environmental footprint of the bottled water industry is made even bigger by export markets - up to 60 percent of brands like Evian and Volvic are shipped out of Europe to chic restaurants round the world. European consumers are plumping for ever-more exotic products like Fijian spring water to be shipped over here. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at euobserver.com ...
There is even one more lesson- even as this article closes with a claim that 1 billion people don't have "access" to safe drinking water, there is no mention of just how easy it would be to have FedEx or DHL deliver pallet loads of European of Fijian bottled water to every thirsty peasant on the planet. This absurd suggestion proves that "access" is all about the affordability of clean local water, and not a bit about water itself.
BUMP!
No plastic bottles to dump, no harmful chemicals, no intrusive water mains... and the fresh feeling of getting your face so close to nature.
Why can't everyone be GREEN?
It depends on where you live in Europe as to whether you even want to drink the water. We live in the Stuttgart, Germany, area (Boeblingen) and the water has so much calcium that both my husband and I got kidney stones in pretty quick order! No more tap water and we have to watch even the bottled water for Calcium content.
Have you ever noticed that in most pictures you see of hollywood actors they have a bottle of imported water in their hands. The leftist/liberal actors are sooooo eco-minded. Yeah right. Bimbos!
In the future, "clean" water delivery will be decentralized, like electricity, because of fuel cells.
"City water" will still be delivered, but most people will vie for home purification with either reverse osmosis or fuel cell purification. A typical system will be about the size of a bread machine and will turn tap water into purer than distilled water, which will then have a drop of salts added for flavor and trace minerals.
Outside of the developed world, it will be much the same, except with entire villages using whatever water is available, then running it through ethanol consuming purification systems.
In the last few years, many third and fourth world nations are using an inexpensive filtration system solely to eliminate arsenic from water, so they are already "sold" on the concept of water purification.
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