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Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

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Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#31

Post by evgen »

flopto wrote: post #21
evgen wrote: post #5

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 ca…

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/…

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.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#32

Post by ThomPete »

a_imho wrote: post #25

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.

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.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#33

Post by pitchka »

morsch wrote: post #19
Yver wrote: post #3

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.

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...

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...

(pdf report on the right)

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#34

Post by radiorental »

evgen wrote: post #24
noja wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes time to get the water back where you can drink it. We had this discussion before when we talked about the drought in California.

It takes energy, not time. It takes a long time if you passively wait for random environmental processes to slowly replace the water, and a very short amount of time if you actively apply energy to the problem.

Where does this energy come from and, more importantly, how many does it cost.

All of our problems could be solved with an unlimited amount of energy applied to them. Most of them were created that way too.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#37

Post by TeMPOraL »

evgen wrote: post #24
noja wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes time to get the water back where you can drink it. We had this discussion before when we talked about the drought in California.

It takes energy, not time. It takes a long time if you passively wait for random environmental processes to slowly replace the water, and a very short amount of time if you actively apply energy to the problem.

That actually highlights the problem perfectly. Energy is the metric that matters.

With current knowledge and level of technology humanity has, we can make almost anything by applying energy to shuffling dirt. Need gasoline? We can synthesize it. Need gold? We can recycle it out of stuff. Need drinking water? We can make it out of almost anything.

All that's needed is energy, which is something we don't have much of. Last time I checked we didn't have the world full of nuclear reactors. Until we hit a sustainable and ridiculous energy abundance, we can't assume we can fix any global problem with energy - there's not enough of it to go around.

EDIT: Wording.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#38

Post by wibr »

Smaug123 wrote: post #12

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 fo…

It's very common in Germany to mix e.g. apple juice with fizzy water (called Apfelschorle), the ratio according to your liking.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#39

Post by baldfat »

flopto wrote: post #21
evgen wrote: post #5

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 ca…

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/…

We "use" water so poorly for agriculture and cities. I lived in Imperial Valley California. They have an open canal through a very dry desert for 100 miles. The canal is made of porous concrete that leaks along the way. It is then used in the farms to produce what I was told is the majority of America's lettuces and vegetables.

They LOVE farming out here since there is virtually no rain or weather events to complicate things. They have everything down to a science and a tight schedule that rarely if ever changes. We use up 90%+ of the Colorado River for this one purpose. We then ship these all across the nation using more resources. Seems a bit wasteful.

So how much water to produce a head of lettuce?

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#40

Post by spacehome »

cpach wrote: post #10
evgen wrote: post #5

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 ca…

Perhaps it would be more illuminating to see how much energy was used to create the soft drink.

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

Energy is one of those strange things, where consumption is not necessarily destruction. You 'used' a joule of energy when you heated up your coffee this morning, then dumped the waste heat to the rest of your kitchen, where it became an input for another part of the cycle. The energy did not go away when you consumed it, and in this case most of the energy 'used' in the production of a cup of coffee was never lost.

[I kid, I kid, I know you meant negentropy, but I just couldn't help myself.]

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