Posted on 07/26/2007 1:17:56 PM PDT by vadum
"Don't drink the water" is a warning doctors and public health officials typically give travelers going overseas. But lately some environmentalists and city officials have been saying the same thing. Only this time they're trying to prevent American consumers from drinking bottled water.
Their reasoning? The energy used to package and transport imported bottled water contributes to global warming. If environmentalist groups have their way, grocery shelves will no longer carry popular products like Fiji from the South Pacific island and Evian from France.
Companies like Fiji and Evian emphasize the cleanliness and purity of their water. Fiji says its water comes from a source "far from pollution" and is "designed to prevent any possibility of human contact." Evian's spring water comes from the French Alps. You would think this water ought to be an environmentalist's dream.
Instead, their bottles provoke nightmares. Allen Hershkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council says, "It's ironic that on some of the labels of the bottles, you see snow-capped mountains and glaciers when in fact the production of the bottle is contributing to global warming, which is melting those snowcaps and those glaciers."
Complaints like that have led San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to issue an executive order banning city departments from purchasing bottled water, even for water coolers.
And Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson ordered his city's Fire Department to replace the usual chests of bottled water and sports drinks used to quench firefighters' thirst. Every firefighter will now be given a refillable 10-ounce container instead. And, get this, two city personnel will be assigned to fill them as they fight fires. I thought only high-schoolers got the job of water boy.......
FROM: http://www.capitalresearch.org/news/news.html?id=482
FULL ARTICLE AVAILABLE AT: http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070726/COMMENTARY/107260001
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
It seems like over a matter of a few months this has gone from a somewhat annoying discussion to a huge push in the media with ad campaigns and tie-ins from everything from insurance to electricity.
Who the hell is behind this big push?
What sort of legislative porking is waiting in the wings for us once the stupidity demographic is well massaged?
Soooooo true!! I have heard they are filling up landfills. If so, recycle them. But having runners, bikers, outdoor workers be banned from carrying these bottles is just naziism.
If concerned about it, buy a Brita filter and re-use the bottles... that’s what I do... I have a bottle that I’ve used for over a year... the others, well I filled them up and we shot them with various handguns and rifles, then recycled them...
These ecoloonies/global warming nuts/health ghouls/government control freaks have long since developed into a major pain in the a@@.
Local Glacier water dispensers are .25 to .35 a gallon (bring your own refillable bottle). Taste good.
For sure, the elitist snobs who are down on bottled water, pointed knives, SUV’s, etc must not live in my area.
Tap water here is good enough to gargle with, but that’s about it. Tastes bad. Especially in the dry summer months.
Did you know...
....the two most popular bottled waters in the United States -— Aquafina from Pepsi-Cola and Dasani from Coke -— aren’t mineral water at all? They’re reprocessed municipal water. That is, treated tap water.
....why bottled water tends to have an expiration date printed on the label? It’s not because the purity of the water degrades. It’s because the plastic container may contain chemicals (phthalates or Bisphenol) that could leak into the water.
....how few bottles used for water are recycled? Just 10%. Ninety percent of water bottles are simply....thrown away. That’s a lot of bottles: Water is a $16 billion a year business in this country. Last year, Americans each drank 28.3 gallons of bottled water. That’s about 50 billion plastic water bottles. Or -— to make it personal -— you pitched 167 bottles. Maybe 17 got recycled.
...how much energy it takes to make plastic bottles? A good estimate of a year’s consumption in the United States: about 1.5 million barrels of oil. You could fuel 100,000 cars for a year on that. [It also takes water to make bottles for water. Don’t ask.]
And then there’s the ecological piece.
How’s this for weird? At the Fiji Water factory, they ship a million bottles a day. The bottles are another story. They’re not made in Fiji. They’re shipped there, filled and transported back -— at greater cost than it takes to bottle the water in the first place. The water company is a boon to Fiji’s economy; the business provides jobs and, in emergencies, water. Water? Well, half the population of Fiji has no potable water.
In fact, while Americans are quaffing a billion bottles a week, one out of six people in the world lacks safe drinking water.
Three thousand children die each a day because they contract diseases from contaminated water.
And we’re asking ourselves: Poland Spring or Pellegrino?
My wife and I decided to stop asking that question. Instead, we decided to take our perfectly decent tap water and filter it at home. And then put it in Dasani or Aquafina bottles and sell it -— no, just kidding.
But which one?
The gifted Reiko master Pamela Miles urged us to buy the Multipure. I’ve looked at the CBVOCSC Countertop Water Filter. It seems to be a quality device. And easy to maintain -— you need to change the filter just once a year. But it is a device, and $320.
Of the containers that you store in your refrigerator, the most popular brand is Brita. My research shows PUR is a better choice. Not only does the PUR filter out more impurities, it’s cheaper -— 20 cents a gallon of water to 25 cents with a Brita. Yes, the PUR filters cost three times as the Brita; they also last three times as long.
How will you carry small amounts of water? Maybe it’s best not to recycle Fiji bottles, or, if you’re in the athletic mode, Poland Spring sports bottles. Purists may want the Klean Kanteen 12 oz Sippy, made of “non-leaching polypropylene plastic”. To super-size, there’s a stainless steel Klean Kanteen 18 oz container.
We chose the PUR 2-stage dispenser, largely for its 2-gallon capacity. It’s early days, but so far it’s no more trouble than hauling out to the store for Poland Spring, getting it home and, in a New York apartment where every square foot needs to justify its existence, store it somewhere. The water tastes every bit as good as the spring waters we used to cherish. And the taste of virtue? Even better.
-— by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com
(with thanks to Marshall Cohen)
Maybe not the best idea for kids but we don't have any at home so my wife and I drink distilled water at 56 cents a gallon, we have our own cooler. I still have all 32 of my teeth and I am 62 years old.
I make coffee with the distilled water too.
We have municipal tap water and just got tired of that strong smell of chlorine.
Ahhhhhhh not true! In many areas of the country, the public water supply tastes so nasty no one can drink it! Two separate places I know of and have been to, are on a natural gas table, and the water in their wells is sulfur smelling because of it. I have all I can do to shower in in it, never ind drink it. They rely on bottled spring water for drinking.
"Every firefighter will now be given a refillable 10-ounce container instead. And, get this, two city personnel will be assigned to fill them as they fight fires"
Thanks for the info. Gotta love the knowlege on FR.
You’d besmirch good single-malt with ice? Heathen!
Why would anyone buy bottled water? My god, water here in Western NY from the Erie County Water Authority costs $2.81 per THOUSAND gallons. 1 thousand gallons!! Two dollars and eighty one cents. Think about it. Good grief.
Evian is naive spelled backwards.
It’s not Global Warming anymore. It’s now referred to as Global Climate Change.
Please adjust your templates as needed.
Floride, among other things, is a very toxic substance.
Putting it in the tap water is stupid.
Why?
Because any “medication” needs doseages adjusted to size and age.
For example, a small child who drinks a lot of tap water could easily get an over dose over time and come to have the various problems that too much floride can cause.
Way we are doing it with the drinking water makes as much sense as “one size fits all” clothing for everyone.
I won't have to buy bottled water then and I can get my exercise daily collecting dead wood from the forest floor to stockpile for winter.
Floride, among other things, is a very toxic substance.
Putting it in the tap water is stupid.
Why?
Because any “medication” needs doseages adjusted to size and age.
For example, a small child who drinks a lot of tap water could easily get an over dose over time and come to have the various problems that too much floride can cause.
Way we are doing it with the drinking water makes as much sense as “one size fits all” clothing for everyone.
As for bottle water and global warming, if you cut to the chase, who is being said is, “more people, more warming”. Yet the global warming liberals are fine with flooding the USA with illegals and massive immigration and are mum about the high birth rates of 3rd World’ers and Muslims.
Also, what's the CO2 cost of maintaining a staff of pairs of water-boys?
Hopefully, this policy will be quickly and publicly recognized for its idiocy, and cancelled.
This kind of ego massaging stupidity is what gets people killed. Either you're wasting two trained firefighters as waterboys or you've got two untrained civilians wandering around an active firefight getting in the way. You couldn't make up a scene like this in a movie because people would say it's so stupid it's just not plausible.
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