More info against bottled water
 

This is another one of those neat images that shows you tons of info about something. I'd highly recommend the click and quick read.

Infographic of the Day: Is Bottled Water Really That Bad? Yes | Design & Innovation | Fast Company

Woah...that's crazy. Only time we ever drink bottled water is when we're on vacation in another country other then Canada or the US.

The Wife and I just finished watching Irena Salina's great documentary about water: Flow: For Love of Water.
You can watch it on Top Documentary Films.

I've actually bought Buffalo tap water in 1 gal and 2.5gal jugs, hundreds of miles from home, when I found that the local well water was too flavorful for me. If I had known, I might have brought it from home.

Also, when I'm offered free bottled water, and I'm really thirsty, I prefer to dump out that PET-flavored stuff and refill with tap water. Surprisingly, this offends some people.

Not only that, but the bottles contain BPA which is a synthetic estrogen.

Bisphenol A - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Updated repeat after me: "No more plastic bottles, or #7 plastic, or things that leach BPA or aluminum...": Brave New Leaf

I now use stainless steel bottle (like Kleen Kanteen) and we have bee using Brita filters on our tap water for many years. Our town has local wells, and the water is pretty hard (lots of iron and manganese, etc.) and the Brita filtered water tastes much better. You can do a double blind test and pick the difference any time. Coffee tastes much better, too with filtered water.

There's an episode on Penn & Teller's show that discussed how people's opinion about bottled water are subjective. There's was one experiment where they served tap water placed in fancy bottles and priced them at ridiculous rates (one of them went over $100 a glass, claiming it came from the everglades or somewhere). Then they recorded the opinions of the buyers. It's really great stuff.

I'd just like to add that I have always been opposed to bottled water in it's current implementation. I personally get all of my drinking/cooking water form a natural spring near by in the mountains. I transport and store it in glass carboys, the kind used for making beer at home. I have never had water that tastes and feels better. 98% of bottled water tastes like decent tap water to me. The other 2% costs a fortune and I only drink it as a treat. Water like Gerolsteiner and Appolinaris.

More infographics about water

I believe that the last graphic shows how much water each country has compared to how much it uses, but I can't find a better res version of it.

Any water I send down the drain goes right back in to the same river (Niagara) that we pull our drinking water from. I don't see any harm in that, except the energy involved in pumping it to my house, and the cost of running the sewage treatment plant. The number of times I flush my toilet has very little to do with whether persons living in slums in Mozambique can afford plumbing.

Likewise, the statement that it takes 10500 lbs of water to make a hamburger is kind of silly. That water can be used more than once. And does the 312000lbs of water per car figure include the water used by the assembly line workers, their families at home, and the hamburgers they eat for lunch? :rolleyes:

The real issue is economic development of the third world, as all of the world's water problems can literally be solved with money. Look at sub-saharan Africa. No "areas of water shortage" according to the infographic. It should be a breadbasket, but instead, it's very much reliant on food imports. What can I do to promote scientific crop rotation, fertilization, irrigation, and mechanized agriculture in places like Zimbabwe? That's a genuine question, and I do have some funds set aside for charity.

So what...???

The U.S. just happens to have lots of fresh water available.



If one can not provide a safe environment with adequate Water, Food and Shelter for the well being of their children then they shouldn't have them...

Population control is the problem in these countries, not the available resources.

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