
Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf] - thepoet
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v526/n7571/pdf/526034a.pdf
======
dang
This submission broke the HN guidelines by cherry-picking a detail from the
article and using that for the title ("340 to 620 litres of water are used for
every litre of soft drink produced"). That is editorializing, and it's not
allowed here. The HN rule says to change the original title only when it is
misleading or linkbait
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)).
We've changed this one back to the original, truncated to fit HN's 80 char
limit.

You can see from this thread how powerfully a discussion is determined by the
title when people do this. That's why we don't allow it. On HN, being the
first (or luckiest) submitter of an article confers no special rights over the
story. You don't get to frame it for others—they can and should make up their
own minds. For that we need titles that reflect the content itself, not
submitter spin.

If you'd like to point out what you think is important about a story, you're
welcome to do so in the thread, where your opinion is on a level playing field
with everyone else's. The title, though, should be that of the article or
(when necessary to change it) an accurate and neutral description drawn from
the article.

There's no more important single factor in making HN the substantive place we
want it to be. The effect of an editorialized title is much stronger than you
might think; in this case it was nearly total. I should remember this one to
use as an example in the future.

~~~
dustingetz
Hi dang, comments like this are seen by .0000001% of your users, can we encode
the rules in some moderation tools please? displaying the guidelines above the
comment form would go a long way too.

------
tim333
>340 to 620 litres

I amused myself trying to find the source. The article is based from a quote
from the book which is based on a study:

The green, blue and grey water footprint of crops and derived crop products,
Twente Water Centre

[http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Mekonnen-
Hoekstra-...](http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Mekonnen-
Hoekstra-2011-WaterFootprintCrops.pdf)

I think he is for example counting the rain and irrigation water that falls on
the sugar cane that it used to make the Coke.

Quote from the book:

In 2011, in- vestigators from the University of Twente Water Centre in the
Netherlands conducted a careful assessment of the total direct and indirect
water footprint of a specific soda: a half-liter bottle of a hypothetical
carbonated beverage sweetened with beet sugar. They based their assessment on
a systematic method developed specifically for this purpose.

The result: 170 to 310 liters per half-liter soft drink. But we don’t care
about half liters. We care about full liters. For that, we need to double
these figures, giving us astonishing water-use ratios of 340 to 620 liters per
liter of soda. The range varied with the type of sweetener and the country
growing the sugar. The 620 water-use ratio applied to a soda made with cane
sugar grown in Cuba, whereas the 340 ratio applied to a soda sweetened with
beet sugar produced in the water-efficient Netherlands. Sodas sweetened with
high-fructose corn syrup grown in the United States required 360 liters per
liter. These amounts, enormous as they seem in comparison to the prize-
winning 1.4, are on the low side of water use for food production; figures for
meat and dairy production, for example, are higher.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Besides which, that water isn't lost; in the Netherlands, it either sinks into
the soil to eventually become ground water again (after which it's reused), or
it ends up in the sea via canals and rivers. It's not like we have a water
shortage in NL, not yet anyway. Besides ground water, there are several rivers
passing through NL coming from the Alps, sometimes to the point of
overflowing.

Really, the only thing wasteful would be the energy needed to pump up and
distribute the water. But we get some of the most efficient farmland in
return, without harming anyone (unlike e.g. the US that caused the dustbowl
thanks to overly aggressive farming)

edit: also that's only when irrigation is actually needed, we get our fair
share of rain.

~~~
basseq
Scientifically-speaking, is _any_ water "lost"? Thinking back to those
pictures of plains and mountains with a big circular arrow in my seventh grade
science textbook: couldn't you say that even the water used by crops, turned
into coke, and consumed by humans is eventually returned the ecosystem in some
form or another?

~~~
wavefunction
Water vapor is lost to the vacuum of space, though it's obviously not enough
to make a perceptible difference, at least on a human scale.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...and replenished _from space_ through slushball comets!

~~~
snuxoll
(Almost?) All water on Earth came from a comet, pretty amazing when you think
about it.

~~~
codeisawesome
Extremely. I just can't reconcile the fact that _all this water_ came from
multiple comet impacts. It somehow feels _wrong_.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...and if even one of the trillion comets over a billion years had some spore
or cell frozen inside...

------
johnloeber
Here's what I'm curious about: how much water is used for every liter of
_drinking water_? It seems clear that a "liter of water", which could be all
kinds of polluted, is NOT the same as a liter of bottled or tap water. A liter
of drinkable water has to undergo some filtration process, etc. and I'd be
extremely interested in seeing how much water is used in that process. That
would help put the headline's figure in context.

~~~
Retric
Very little water is lost in municipal water filtration. The largest loss is
generally evaporation from dam reservoir which is on the order of 10%.
Depening on location temperature, humidity, ect.

Don't forget you drink the same water you bathe with. At scale it's producing
a lot of water.

PS: Now a lot of water is lost after filtration by leaks/breaks in water
pipes. But, that's mostly an economic choice as water is really cheap
replacing pipes is expensive.

~~~
logicrook
The point he is making is not reduced to that, it is that you should judge
things with the same metrics. I.e. how much water is used for bottled water?
For running water? How much harmful chemicals can you find in soft drink,
bottled water, tap water? (because running water may be very cost-efficient,
but it comes with a price, the dizzying quantity of chlorine you can find
inside being one).

Just giving one number out of your hat is a dishonest persuasive move (unless
everybody already knows the numbers for all the previous questions), precisely
because the author knows very well that most people cannot put that number
into perspective. This is not a very scientific attitude for something
published in a 'scientific' journal.

~~~
Retric
Despite what you might think water is not a particularly limited resource.

At the municipal level 1 cent ~= 1,000+ gallons of water but this can vary
_greatly_ by location. As a customer in many ways you are paying for pipes not
water.

PS: California farmers often pay ~70$ on average per acre foot or 325,851
gallons. But, they also get a lot of water for far less than that it's the
rare edge cases that are really expensive.
[http://westernfarmpress.com/water-70-24-million-acre-
foot](http://westernfarmpress.com/water-70-24-million-acre-foot)

~~~
logicrook
I agree with you. But what if you want to drink pure/purified water? You can
do for little to no cost in certain conditions, but for city people there are
either bottled water or some purifying systems that can be costly and of
various levels of efficiency. Then, how much water does one liter of water
costs?

But then you could argue that people don't need to drink purified water, tap
water is good enough, lead levels, chlorine levels (etc) are low enough. But
this is another question from the previous one, that should also be discussed
taking the whole picture into account.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> But then you could argue that people don't need to drink purified water, tap
> water is good enough, lead levels, chlorine levels (etc) are low enough.

Distilled water will also osmotically drain you, although not at any level you
should be worried about. But it's not at all clear that it's "better for you"
than water with stuff in it.

------
evgen
You keep using this word "used", I do not think it means what you think it
means...

Fresh water is one of those strange things, where consumption is not
necessarily destruction. You 'used' a glass of water that you drank this
morning, then excreted it over the rest of the day as urine and water vapor
where it became an input for another part of the cycle. The water did not go
away when you consumed it, and in this case most of the water 'used' in the
production of a litre of sugar-enhanced carbonated water was never lost.

~~~
flopto
My opinion on this is totally uninformed.

A quick search for 'global aquifer depletion' yields

"Scientists had long suspected that humans were taxing the world’s underground
water supply, but... major aquifers [are] indeed struggling to keep pace with
demands from agriculture, growing populations, and industries such as mining."
... "The situation is quite critical"
([https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/16/new-n...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/16/new-
nasa-studies-show-how-the-world-is-running-out-of-water/))

~~~
evgen
This talks about a water source, and more specifically a slow-filling source
that has been tapped too much. This is where you should apply your concern and
effort, to the protection and wise management of easily accessible fresh water
sources that are being depleted too rapidly.

If someone talks about water usage (usually in a generic 'it takes X gallons
to make a Y, so you should feel bad about doing/using Y' format) without
regard to the specific sources then they are trying to bullshit you. If they
talk about a specific source and use then keep reading to see if the rest of
their argument holds up to scrutiny.

~~~
exelius
It is still relevant though; because for things like soft drinks that have an
extremely low price-to-weight ratio, the only production model that makes
sense is a local one. Coca-Cola doesn't just have 3 or 4 factories in the US
that make soda; they have one (if not more) in every major city. Some of those
cities make use of vulnerable water supplies, and some don't.

But ultimately it's the same conversation - any manufacturing of perishable /
low-cost-to-weight ratio (e.g. cement is almost always produced at a factory
within 50 miles of where it is used) at industrial scale is being done in a
consistent, distributed way at many different locations around the
country/world. If those processes damage vulnerable environments, they need to
be looked at and modified.

~~~
vonmoltke
Nitpick:

 _Concrete_ (as well as mortar, stucco, and other such products) is made
locally, both dry and wet mix. _Cement_ is made in remote areas, typically
near the limestone quarries, because the process involves large, dirty, smelly
kilns.

------
Smaug123
I'm fairly anecdotally sure there would be a market for _much_ less sweet
fizzy drinks. I know I'm a weird outlier, because I dilute fruit juice with
water to make it more palatable, but I think I'd really like sugary soft
drinks if they had the same flavour but heroically less sweetness. My
favourite soft drink is two parts orange juice from concentrate, to one part
carbonated water; perhaps that's not sweet enough for mass-market, but I'm not
the only one who stays away from fizzy drinks because they find them too
sweet.

~~~
jzwinck
I thought the same thing about yogurt. The flavored ones have a lot of sugar
and people I know say they want a less sweet version.

Then last week I met a man in the supermarket. We were both staring at various
yogurts. I was comparison shopping; he was "spying" on the competition and the
store. You see, he worked for a yogurt maker.

He asked me what I considered important and I asked him about reduced sugar
variants. He said this topic came up over and over in market research.
Customers demand reduced sugar. But when they do taste testing, most of those
customers choose a product with mainstream sweetness. They want the idea of
less sugar. But their tastebuds are not prepared for it.

~~~
PepeGomez
"People" isn't one person. Maybe most people choose sweeter yogurt, but that
doesn't mean there isn't a substantial minority of people who would prefer
less sweet yogurt.

Who knows if these tests even accurately measure what people would actually
buy? I remember that Coca-Cola did such tests too once...

~~~
jzwinck
The guy I spoke with was unequivocal: they don't think they can sell enough to
make it worth any shelf space at all. Their brand in my market gets allocated
enough space for about five flavors. They know exactly what sells how much and
where, and they know it to some extent for their competitors too (none of whom
produce reduced-sugar, but most of whom do produce reduced-fat).

Now, if your argument is that these full time professional market researchers
can't figure out what people would actually buy...well, I thought the guy
sounded extremely intelligent and well trained, and he had no reason to
deceive me.

~~~
anentropic
it's a vicious circle

this is where there's a role for regulation to break the loop

------
knob
I will mention the Coca Cola plant in Cayey, Puerto Rico. I consulted with
them some years ago, and they were #1 in Coca Cola's water consumption world
wide. If I am not mistaken, they would "use" 1-1/2 gallons of water for every
1 gallon of soft drink they produced.

I do remember the water treatment plant operator working with co-workers from
other countries... especially Haiti. What they told me is that in Haiti, Coca
Cola's operation were really bad in wastefulness, and under the company's
initiative they were trying to bring their Haiti water treatment plant in-line
with Puerto Rico's.

~~~
mapleoin
> they were #1 in Coca Cola's water consumption world wide.

This sounds like they're the _biggest_ consumer, but the rest of your comment
sounds more like they're the most _efficient_ consumer?

~~~
knob
You are 100% right... I messed that up. They were the most _efficient_. Sorry
about that!

------
a_imho
My browser shows me a 2 page article with numbers pulled out of thin air. Btw
620 and 340 is very far apart. One drink uses 68 l of water for packaging and
the other 124 l? I am skeptical.

~~~
ThomPete
Softdrinks are only one tiny part of number of products which uses water
heavily.

Add almonds, microchips, mining, recycling and I frankly don't understand what
exactly it is you are skeptical about.

~~~
PepeGomez
Almonds? Almonds are probably the most drought resistant plant grown for human
consumption, it can grow almost anywhere without irrigation. In fact, too much
moisture kills its roots.

~~~
ThomPete
[http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-
califo...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-californias-
water-going)

~~~
PepeGomez
It's much less than other crops and the description says it's assuming
irrigation is the only source of water, that's not usually the case. It's
probably not the case with almonds at all, unless you aim for rotten roots.
It's a desert tree.

~~~
ThomPete
You should tell that to California last summer who ended up with that exact
problem.

~~~
PepeGomez
What problem?

~~~
ThomPete
[http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-
drough...](http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-
drought/article57432423.html)

~~~
PepeGomez
That's nonsense. It's native to the Middle East, from the Levant to Pakistan.
I see no good reason why growing it should be problematic in California. They
either use it as an excuse to get more water for other crops, or they're doing
something very wrong, though I have no idea what it could be.

~~~
maxerickson
They planted large orchards in a desert. The linked article doesn't make any
statements about how much water each tree is getting, so I'm not sure what you
would be calling nonsense.

It does state that California grows most of the world supply of almonds,
perhaps the number of trees being supported by the imported water is much
higher than you think?

~~~
PepeGomez
Large orchards of desert trees. I get that the valley may be too dry even for
almonds, but that won't turn them into a "relatively thirsty crop" as the
article insists.

------
akerro
340literes of water is used to produce a pound of meat.
([https://news.vice.com/article/meat-is-murder-on-the-
climate-...](https://news.vice.com/article/meat-is-murder-on-the-climate-
anyway))

Water will be the new oil.

~~~
josu
Desalinization technology is already pretty advanced [1], and the oceans are
big. I really doubt it.

[1] The wikipedia article is a good place to start if you are interested
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination)

~~~
dexterdog
But is it over of those things like solar and shale oil that is too expensive
at current rates, but just sits in the background and enforces a price ceiling
on the cheaper methods?

------
Yver
Is that a lot or...? Without a frame of reference I don't know if it's more
than a litre of coffee or a litre of asparagus water from Whole Foods.

~~~
morsch
Per volume of the end product, coffee is worse, black tea is better.

Coffee: ~1100 liters of water per liter of coffee.

Black tea: ~270 liters of water per liter of tea.

Source: _The water footprint of coffee and tea consumption in the Netherlands_
,
[http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/ChapagainHoekstra2...](http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/ChapagainHoekstra2007waterforcoffeetea.pdf)

~~~
pitchka
Another nice comparison:

Milk: ~1000 liters of water per liter

Chocolate: ~17000 liters of water per kg

Beef: ~15000 liters of water per kg

Sheep Meat: ~10000 liters of water per kg

Pork: ~6000 liters of water per kg

Butter: ~5500 liters of water per kg

Chicken meat: ~4500 liters of water per kg

Wine: ~400 liters of water per liter

Beer: ~300 liters of water per liter

source: [http://www.imeche.org/policy-and-
press/reports/detail/global...](http://www.imeche.org/policy-and-
press/reports/detail/global-food-waste-not-want-not)

(pdf report on the right)

~~~
rplnt
Well this is highly misleading. Products that are measured VERY differently
are grouped together.

~~~
pitchka
Just like the statistic of sweet beverages. Of course that beers that include
fish stuff require more or less water.

Of course that wine produced in dry climate requires a lot of water.

Producing a cow, chicken or pig will take a lot of water, probably not much of
a difference if animal is located at northern/southern parts or in some shed
at equatorial region.

I don't understand what is misleading. Data of water pollution should be of
more concern than how much water something needs to thrive.

This data shouldn't influence your decision of what to consume. Data of
pollution should.

If you're worried some categories are incorrect then at least you have a lower
bound there. Add the water footprint of food that cow or pig eats and then
you'll get more accurate. It's no-brainer that raising 60 billion land animals
yearly takes a lot of water but it's a silly statistic. The pollution of water
that the process creates is more important and a much more relevant statistic.

------
onion2k
Assuming this is, at least in part, water that's used for things like cooling
plastics when bottles are made or rinsing machines to clean them, that number
would be a simple calculation of the amount of water used per litre without
taking in to account the fact that a lot of the the water in the system is
recycled. A manufacturer could use the same 340 litres to make 1,000,000
litres of soft drinks, right?

~~~
eterm
Yes, it would be more helpful to have a breakdown of how much of that is
service water and how much is potable water.

------
jtwaleson
How much is used to produce one litre of bottled water?

~~~
vijayr
What about meat? Doesn't the animal industry also use insane amounts of water?

~~~
ArkyBeagle
It depends on who you mean by "the meat industry" and who's doing the
measuring. It's possible to have deplorable levels of inefficiency at one end
and something approximating buffalo grazing on the other.

------
wahsd
That's a bunch of nonsense. If you calculated the water used in the production
of every liter of drinking water, you would also find there are
inefficiencies. It is the nature of adding value, you use more lower grade
resources to produce higher grade resources. I know some of you will get an
aneurysm just by reading that because you have an instinct level reaction to
soft drink being described as value added, but reality simply is that a higher
caloric drink that sells for higher monetary value is a higher value product
than simple water.

You could just as well publish a finding that you should filter your own pond
scum and boil it yourself because the potable water infrastructure costs water
to produce potable water you just squander by showering yourself.

------
cat-dev-null
For reference, 1 lb (454 g) of beef requires between 3800 L and 9500 L of
water. This implies a typical beef restaurant "value meal" demands on the
order of 10000 L of water.

Another important point is that fresh water is neither created nor destroyed,
although entropy leads to more energy being required in the entire supply
chain for its consumption and in external systems to treat/move/reclaim water
for other purposes (increased competition / water prices).

There's also pesticide and fertilizer runoff, deforestation and reduced
rainfall (Brazil) and antibiotic resistant, pandemic disease emergence (swine
flu).

------
known
A good case for "Tax Waste, Not Work"

------
dmritard96
Perhaps a bit tangential - but when things like this say 'diet soda has not
been shown as an effective means of weight control' it annoys me. Not because
I don't think there are serious questions are diet soda, but because the
mischaracterized what diet soda is - not a weight control product but rather a
zero calorie drink.

Especially when they go on to talk about shell lobbying companies with dubious
names, you would think they would avoid imitating...

------
PepeGomez
I don't see how it could possibly be true, even RO "wastes" only several times
the amount of water produced. Where does all the water go?

------
at-fates-hands
I just saw a CNBC documentary about the issue of water shortages in India and
how Pepsi is at the heart of the controversy. The interesting thing was how
many people Pepsi employs, but is accused of contributing to the ongoing water
shortages because is their plants in the area.

[http://www.cnbc.com/id/44963631](http://www.cnbc.com/id/44963631)

------
fiatmoney
"Used".

It's not like the water is converted into pure energy and radiated into space.
It is still there - some of it is locked away in the polymers in the
packaging, which can be recycled, some of it is used for washing operations
and is available for reuse after treatment, some of it is used to water the
corn and joins the larger water cycle...

------
baldfat
Chocolate (One Pound) -- 2847 gallons (10777.07 liters of Water)

[http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/from-lettuce-to-beef-
wh...](http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/from-lettuce-to-beef-whats-the-
water-footprint-of-your-food.html)

------
kafkaesq
And all of this, for a product that has net negative nutritional value (and in
some compositions, is arguably toxic).

------
BFatts
Makes a good case to get a SodaStream.

------
hauschi
How much water is used for a bottle of sparking water shipped to the local
shop? Anyone has an idea?

------
BlackBerryBruce
Without commenting on the contents: damn, that is a nicely formatted article.

------
progx
To compare it: how many litres of water needed for 1 litre water?

------
NumberCruncher
If It's On The Internet, It Must Be True

------
jay-saint
tl;dr Soda wastes a lot of water drink beer instead.

------
coderdude
What do you mean by "litre"? What do you mean by "used"? What do you mean by
"produced"?

~~~
nicholasmarx
Hi James,

I have tried to contact you many times through your wrapbootstrap site, but
all attempts have sadly been ignored. So, I'm going to try this route. I
recently purchased a theme on your site, but I never received the download
link, even though I paid for it. What are you going to do about it?

Thanks, Nicholas Marx

~~~
nicholasmarx
James, I know you want to ignore me, but you cannot. Just refund my order
through PayPal. Just do the right thing, and this will all be over. I will not
rest until I get my $18, that you have stolen from me!

------
homero
Sorry but I don't believe it, it's 90% corn syrup

~~~
Smaug123
A can of Coke is almost entirely aluminium and water; a bottle of Coke is
almost entirely plastic and water.

~~~
colomon
However, the water you speak of there is, to a first approximation, one liter
of water for one liter of Coke. That particular water contributes less than 1%
of the water the article is talking about.

