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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]

#41

Post by 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.

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

#42

Post by a_imho »

ThomPete wrote: post #32
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.

Sorry, I was not clear. I'm skeptical about any of the numbers being accurate. After all it is anecdotal and I think it is too general and not grasps the problem well when your precision is 340-620. No more information than some soft drink production uses twice as much water.

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

#43

Post by mapleoin »

knob wrote: post #41

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, C…

> 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?

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

#44

Post by zuminator »

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.

It's a book review. Presumably the derivation of those numbers is in the book itself.

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

#45

Post by adrianN »

eddd wrote: post #16
cpach wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Or how much energy is used to perform single google query.

The marginal energy is probably not very much. The average energy might be significant, but it's probably dwarfed by a single can of soda if you include the can.

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

#46

Post by smoyer »

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/…

You're both right ... the water is still in the system but no longer in the aquifers (instead it's in the oceans, air, lakes, streams, etc). Apparently, a small amount of water is lost to space (but that will increase as the sun grows hotter). When another extinction-level comet smashes into the earth, it will replenish the water we've lost.

Ain't I a ray of sunshine this morning?

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

#47

Post by sanxiyn »

johnloeber wrote: post #14

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 c…

Quick search gives http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/10/28/241419373/how... which is not very easy to interpret.

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

#48

Post by knob »

mapleoin wrote: post #43
knob wrote: post #41

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, C…

> 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?

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

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

#49

Post by Houshalter »

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/…

But this is an issue which varies a lot by geographic region. So it depends entirely where the soft drinks are being produced. Most places don't pull water from aquifers.

Also I have no idea where they are even getting this number. I think they are counting everything from rainwater that falls on the sugar beets, to the, water used by steam engines to produce electricity. But it's hard to tell because they don't explain the figure at all.

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