Bottled Water is Environmentally Unfriendly

[akarunway 1]

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When I lived in my old apartment, I had no problem drinking the tap water. I'd drink it here, if my water didn't reek of chlorine. The chlorine smell and taste is so strong that it's even possible to taste it when I've used tap water to make ramen or mac and cheese. My water is so nasty, my cats won't drink it, and they didn't have a problem with the water before. Apparently, according to the city, I live much closer to the treatment plant than I did before, and that has something to do with it. I don't mind paying for bottled water, because I won't use my tap water because it's so foul, and there aren't any other alternatives. I do get the big bottes, though, and fill up a nalgene bottle for when I need to take water with me. The bottled water company recycles the bottles, though, so they get sanitized and reused instead of filling up landfills.

I just spent two days underground at the Lk. Skinner (MWD) Filtratrion plant on a shutdown 30' underground adding new GIANT Clorine injectors to the water supply. In a meeting they said they were going to start adding Ozone also (if they haven't already and some other chemical , I'll try to remember the name) You should see were your water comes from and what it goes thru. Hasn't killed me yet tho

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

[smiles 0]

Over 750,000 British Columbians get their drinking water from wells.

Where I live the Abbotsford-Sumas aquifer is unconfined, and thus vulnerable to contamination by surface activities. In recent years, wells drawing on this aquifer have shown elevated levels of nitrate. Result of excess applications of manure and fertilizers on agricultural land, and of poorly-functioning septic tank disposal systems.

We are very fortunate we can stop and collect our natural spring drinking water -(fill up our jugs for free.)


Source is local from Marble Hill- Chilliwack's (Fraser Valley B.C.) where groundwater is the best in Canada. We find the taste of natural spring water is superb- I even prefer it for making tea and coffee.

SMiles

eustress. : a positive form of stress having a beneficial effect on health, motivation, performance, and emotional well-being.

[lurch 0]

In general, most US tap water is better than bottled in pathogen content.

I don't know where your source got their info, but THAT is a bunch of hooey. I work in the industry. We ozonate the living shit out of our water....literally.
Every tanker gets checked. The sources, (which really ARE springs, various locations around New Hampshire, are required to ozonate the water when they ship it to us.) Not ozonated? Not bottled, then. We have sent tankers back before, because someone screwed up at the spring, missed the fact that their ozonator was off when it was filled, blew it off and figured nobody would notice this one wasn't ozonated. We did. We also have an in-house ozonator that lives in the tank room, sits there looking very scary and high-voltage, and makes a very threatening humming noise. Everything that leaves the tank gets reozonated before it even hits the building's internal piping. All piping is stainless, everything we bottle gets sampled and tested 4X an hour. There is actually an ozone alarm in the bottling room. Ozone in the water drops below a certain level for any reason, entire process gets the E-stop till we find out why....usually its a sensor mal. We have an in-house lab specifically to -try- to find any pathogens... samples are kept like back paperwork in the labs and tested periodically to make sure nothing got in it, nothing is growing in it.
You do NOT want to drink freshly bottled water. The ozone makes it taste like eating a fistful of pennies, weird sharp metallic taste. The ozone all goes away in a couple of days, and presto- perfectly clean water with some oxygen in it. Better than anything for cleaning injuries, too. Chance of infection virtually zero... you use tap water for cleaning a cut, its a total gamble, you're betting the town keeps their pipes clean.
I've seen some industries with questionable practices and questionable sanitation... Mine is not one of them.
Got nothing to say about the bottle litter problem, though. Not our problem. You drank it, you deal with it. I make the bottles myself with this thing called a Sidel blowmolding machine, about 83,000 of them per shift. Quality? Yeah, we got quality.

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[kallend 2,175]

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In general, most US tap water is better than bottled in pathogen content.

I don't know where your source got their info, but THAT is a bunch of hooey. I work in the industry. We ozonate the living shit out of our water....literally.
.

whyfiles.org/177bottle_water/2.html

www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/nbw.asp

"Most waters were high quality, but about one-third of the brands tested had at least one sample that was contaminated with high levels of pollutants that exceeded levels allowed by California or bottled water industry standards or guidelines. California has the highest set of standards for bottled water, the NRDC says.

"The study found 22 percent of bottled waters contained levels of synthetic compounds such as arsenic that exceeded the California limit, and 17 percent contained levels of bacteria above voluntary industry standards."

"The NRDC attached the report to their "Citizen Petition to the US Food and Drug Administration for Improvements in FDA's Bottled Water Program." The report's authors note that "some bottled water comes from sources that are vastly different from what the labels might lead consumers to believe." One brand labeled "spring water" actually came from a well in an industrial facility's parking lot. And according to government and industry estimates, between 25-40% of bottled water sold in the US is taken from public water systems -- "tap water, essentially," the NRDC notes.

Eric Olson, who works on water safety issues for the NRDC and is principle author of the report, told Reuters Health, "We concluded that although a lot of consumers assumed that bottled water was... cleaner, safer, and better regulated than tap water, that is, in fact, not the case."

"While most bottled water (we tested) was of fairly high quality, about one third of brands tested violated either strict enforceable state standards or microbial impurity guidelines," Olson explained.

After testing more than 100 brands of bottled water, the NRDC found that "some bottled water contained bacterial contaminants, and several brands of bottled water contain synthetic organic chemicals... or inorganic contaminants... in at least some bottles."

In the report, the NRDC described the "serious deficiencies" of regulations designed to protect those who consume bottled water. "FDA's rules... exempt many forms of what most of us would consider 'bottled water' from all of its specific water-testing and contamination standards," the report's authors write. The FDA does not consider products labeled "water," "carbonated water," "seltzer water," "sparkling water," or "soda water," to be "bottled water," nor do most states.

The NRDC cites an example of the "gaping hole" to be found in the current regulatory scheme. "A big city has to test its tap water 100 times or more a month for coliform bacteria... yet bottled water (even at an enormous bottling plant) must be tested for coliform bacteria only once a week under FDA rules."

The report goes on to explain that high bacteria counts make municipal tap water supplies liable to violations but that "FDA bowed to bottled water industry arguments and decided to apply no standards for bacteria... commonly found in bottled water."

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[lurch 0]

Obviously I can't speak for the entire planet's bottlers, BUT...
I know what I see where I've worked...not too many places, true, but enough that the articles bear about the same resemblance to fact that the average newspaper article on skydiving does to what actually went on.
Oh and did I mention we also UV the water on its way out the tanks? This and the ozone is why I do trust the water. Zap it to ozone, ozone kills everything, ozone turns back into O2 and ceases to exist. Theres nothing -else- in it. Its actually clean. No powders bleaches fluorides or chemicals dumped in it to "improve" it somehow. We just make damn sure its sterile when its sealed. I'd love to meet the bacterium that could survive this...several kilowatts of raw UV and a liquid environment so loaded with ozone it'd take the chrome off a truck.
The nrdc article reads like one of those freak-the-consumer expose's intended to convince you that something is a major problem. Kind of like the sudden burst awhile back of articles claiming all kinds of medical and scientific credentials all about how cellphones are such a bigger threat than anyone really knows, blah blah.
The part about the water from one place coming from a parking lot in an industrial park next to a toxic waste dump...
Please... Thats just trying WAY too hard. National enquirer-sounding.
And a lot of it is intended to sound threatening and negative, when it isn't. Leave the cap off bottled water and it might grow bacteria... well, um, yeah, bacteria DO that. The article deliberately misses the point on THAT one trying to sound all doomsday about bottled water... If bacteria won't grow in my tap water after several days, that shit has waaay too much toxic crap in it! I want water, not clorox disinfectant.
At a glance I noticed a bunch more either inaccurate, questionable stretched or spun points, the most obvious being

contained levels of synthetic compounds such as arsenic that exceeded...

Arsenic is not synthetic. Nor a compound. They could have bothered to say "compounds containing arsenic" but their wording is syntax-specific. If they can't even get THAT right...

Can you find a few studies with more fact and less hype? Some thing serious... facts, figures, exactly how many samples taken, from where, from who? an actual paper on the issue with real data, not something edited for magazine-browsing attention spans? Its hard to take an article seriously that tries to convince me that cleaner water is more dangerous than water with chlorine in it. I like my water without halogens.
Not trying to talk trash of your efforts, really....but those artciles feel very much like articles about skydiving written by whuffos.
Final point: Experiment for you. Go buy 2 6-packs of whatever bottled water, variety pack, random sampling. Put 6 on a shelf, unopened. Open and drink the other 6. Refill with tap water. Place on shelf, marked, with the unopened 6. Test for bacteria in a couple weeks. Or just look. Most tap water I've seen gets some kind of scum on it, sealed or not.

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[kallend 2,175]

NRDC is NOT a news media outlet selling sensation.

Just because your company takes care of its product (according to you) doesn't mean that a consumer will necessarily buy a safe bottle of water in a store.

WHY do commercial bottlers oppose bottled water having to pass the same purity tests as tap water?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.