
Stop Drinking Bottled Water - spencera
http://gizmodo.com/stop-drinking-bottled-water-1704609514
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cylinder
At my last job, everyone drank several bottles of water a day (freely
available in the fridge). And they couldn't be bothered walking the empty
bottles to the kitchen where there was a recycling bin - straight to the
trash.

This, even though they added filtering to already good NYC tap water. Only
myself and one other person bothered to fill up a glass instead of take a
bottle.

I sometimes feel like Americans go out of their way to be wasteful. Like it is
some sort of badge of honor or expression of wealth to be able to do this or
have a giant SUV that gets 3mpg.

Edit: don't get me started on the Keurig machine!

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Lagged2Death
Status symbols are inherently wasteful. Waste and the situation implied by
that waste (high status and affluence) is their function. I believe this is
generally true across cultures, but it's often easier to see them for what
they are in someone else's culture.

~~~
Bombthecat
So we Germans aren't right in our mind trying to push for recycling and energy
waste?

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gravypod
Drinking bottled water, where I live, is kind of the only sane choice.

I was made fun of all last semester by dorm-mates about not drinking anything
but bottled. Low and behold, there was a crap ton of lead found in the water
after testing (along with many other particles).

How did I know this would be the case?

Any city or town built more then 70 years ago has this problem. This isn't as
resistant in rich hipster places but in most of the US it is a problem.

Filtered and or bottle water is really the only way to go. Drinking the tap is
not a good idea at all, no matter how many people tell you to.

I'm also the kind of person who uses many of the bottles I drink from for
other purposes. (Starting flowers, cutting in half to make pen holders, etc)

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goldenkey
Not all bottled water is sold by PepsiCo. Not all tap water is as healthy as
alkaline spring water. Tap water is often going through tons of piping,
heavily florinated or chlorinated, and can be tainted with microbes. (Hence
the need for halogens.) Faucet water is good for some things. It still is
beneficial to have sanitary water for boiling food, bathing or showering. But
some of the tap water in America is quite poor in terms of drinkability.

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collyw
I moved from Scotland (great tap water) to Barcelona (crap tap water). I
bought bottled water to begin with but found the amount of plastic in the
trash depressing so I bought a water filter. No carrying water home and less
trash and probably works out cheaper.

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Bombthecat
What kind of filter are you using?

I want to filter too. Right now I'm using filters which needs to be exchanged
every month and filters water very slow :(

Any tips?

~~~
goldenkey
Activated carbon lined with silver works pretty well. PUR sells these.
Unfortunately, the power of activated carbon comes from its pourousness. And
therefore it will always filter much slower than the faucet gpm due to the
resistance which all good filters will provide. You can try compensating by
turning the faucet on very high output. Faucet filters will always be quicker
than any pitcher filter because of that ability to add additional gpm
pressure.

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VeejayRampay
I don't like namedropping brands, but I bought a Sigg water bottle about 5
years ago, cost me 20 euros, it's rock solid and it just works as a container.
It could be any other brand really, just anything with a large enough volume
that you fill it in the morning and drink from it all day long before washing
it at night, leaving it to dry and starting over in the morning. It's a good
system.

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alex_duf
I do the same, but with a good old glass of water. These are under rated I
believe

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VeejayRampay
EDIT: You're right about the glass. I initially misread your comment, my bad.

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k__
My mother always bought bottled water. It was normal that we had about 2
chests of water bottles at home.

I never did this after I got my own flat. Too lazy to carry bottles and to
greedy to pay that much money for it.

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anotheryou
Thankfully I'm lazy enough not to buy bottled water. In my city the water is
good, but tastes not so good (many many minerals. If i dry my black trousers
the wrong way around I'll be left with lines of minerals on the outside (like
dried sweat)). With tea the taste is very obvious.

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eggy
Yes, I get the reasons, and I try to avoid buying small bootles of drinking
water, but living here in East Java, Indonesia right now with my one-year old
baby girl, I am drinking the watercooler-sized plastic bottles on the
dispenser.

It is a poor, rice farming village where you cannot be certain about the
quality of the well water without testing that is not readily available. It
would need to be done for each household on a monthly (minimum) basis to
account for the rainy/dry season, periods of fertilizing, and spraying of
pesticides. It is simply not practical, and requires a huge cultural shift,
and money. I am currently working on rubbish removal here too just out of
personal reasons. That and bringing awareness to rubbish burning, and improper
disposal. Slow and hard going. On the positive side, people here do reuse a
plastic bottle for at least 10 more uses before discarding them unlike my
peers back in NY.

I think the dismissal, or using Flint as more reason to not drink bottled
water is unsubstantiated. Political ineptitude/corruption seems to have been
the main cause there, or at least why it continued hidden for so long.
Truthfully I have not followed it lately, and apologize if this is now
incorrect. Although, Flint has made me question my own municipal drinking
water back in Brooklyn, NY where I was born and raised. I am not sure it makes
me feel better that it could be hidden for so long Flint. I realize plastic
bottling has its cons as well.

I am not sure about using cans or glass. Cans have their spoilage history.
They are usually coated, and I would think they weigh more, so incur a higher
transportation fuel cost. Glass is easy to break, cause injury, and heavy. I
like it, and personally I reuse glass containers from purchased foods all the
time. Maybe a reinforced glass that could be thin and resist breakage like
Pyrex? I love the material.

Plastic bottles are noisy, since the walls are very thin, because they
minimized the amount of PET used to maximize profits. Therefore the amount of
plastic is less than most back-of-the-envelope calculations I have seen. The
energy value of one 500ml PET bottle is worth less than a penny, and that is
after collecting and processing them. Recycled PET costs more than new. And,
because they are thin, and compress easily, they take up a lot less of
landfill than most people imagine. I still don't like it, and wish for a
better solution; I just like to put real numbers on things, and focus my
energies on things that provide the most return on my efforts.

The annual gas you use to shop for your other goods far exceeds the carbon
footprint of the roundtrip cost of your plastic water bottle by two or more
orders of magnitude. Unless like me back in the US, you biked to the store.
Now the food is right around me. No market runs!

Same goes for plastic bags. They are so much thinner and stronger than a
decade ago, and I am not sure paper bags were the way to reduce carbon
footprint, or net a postive return for the environment, but it made a lot of
first-worlders sleep better at night for the wrong reasons. I had the dirt
floor here tiled though, so I am still a first-worlder, and I guess I will
always be!

I dislike the sound of crinkling water bottles, and find the plastic accordion
simile hilarious and true!

Tidbit: I took care of one of the world's largest commercial indoor pools over
here in SE Asia for over 5 years, so I am very familiar with water treatment
and filtration too. There are a lot of misconceptions about it. For instance,
if you smell 'chlorine' it's not chlorine, since chlorine is odorless. You are
smelling the byproduct of the free chlorine having broken down some organic
matter like sweat, urine and skin into. You are smelling chloramines, and they
are not an indicator of a sterile or safe pool.

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benbristow
What about flavoured water?

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ManlyBread
Flavoured water is just soda with some marketing added.

~~~
benbristow
Volvic etc. do flavoured water. It's nothing like Soda. It's literally bottled
water with a bit of flavour added.

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DanBC
Like this one?

[https://www.ocado.com/webshop/product/Volvic-Touch-of-
Fruit-...](https://www.ocado.com/webshop/product/Volvic-Touch-of-Fruit-
Strawberry/35113011?from=shop&tags=%7C20000%7C20977%7C37407%7C134792%7C12549&parentContainer=%7C20977%7C37407%7C134792%7C12549_SHELFVIEW)

    
    
                        per 100ml   per 250ml  
        Carbohydrate	4.8 g	12.1 g
        of which sugars	4.8 g	12.1 g

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benbristow
I think I can live with 12g of sugar in my body. I consume way too much sugar.

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Maximal
I drink Contrex bottled water, because its mineral content provides me with
58% Calcium and 19% Mangnesium per litre.

I balance the negative impact of bottle water (which I acknowledge and
dislike) with the fact I am vegan.

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chrisseaton
> 58% Calcium and 19% Mangnesium per litre

58% of calcium relative to what? 58% of the litre is calcium?

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dozzie
Yes. And you need a pickaxe to drink from your glass.

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gondo
What about cities/countries where tap water is not drinkable? Like: Tokyo,
UAE, Indonesia, Philippines...

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doall
Tap water is drinkable anywhere in Japan.

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marak830
I second this, havnt had issues drinking water anywhere. I'm grandparents use
a tap filter, but I think that's more mental than anything.

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1_player
I don't remember the source, but I recall reading that, paradoxically, tap
water in cities is much better quality than bottled water, due to stricter
controls. Probably doesn't taste as good, but you can be quite sure it won't
harm you.

The tap water from the small village in the Italian country I was born in is
the best I've ever had, but I drink straight from the tap in London without
any issues, except when I need to satisfy my craving for sparkling water.

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messick
You are referencing water standards in the USA. Each water type fell under the
authority of a different Federal agency. EPA for tap, FDA for bottled, I
believe. The FDA has lesser standards. My thoughts are because, at the time,
only suckers would pay money for something that was practically free.

In any case, the standards have now been made the same.

