Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should tell that to California last summer who ended up with that exact problem.
What problem?
Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]
91–100 of 218 posts
Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]
#92To compare it: how many litres of water needed for 1 litre water?
Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]
#93Here'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…
At home I have a 1:1 ratio. I've got my own well and my own pump, so every liter of water I get out of the well flows out through my tap. I guess you could argue that the electricity needed to work the pump may be produced by means that waste water.
Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quick search gives http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/10/28/241419373/how... which is not very easy to interpret.
That's bottled water, not tap water. My guess is it varies greatly to due the source of the water. At the extreme, I would guess that desalination of saltwater to make it usable for drinking water would likely consume huge amount of water per drink unit of water. Given that it's a pretty obvious question, find it interesting that it is not addressed; reason likely is most reporters do not do investigative journalism,…
How would desalination cost water? You vaporize water, catch and cool it back to water, and there you go. The cost here is energy, which varies greatly depending on the sun.
Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]
#95That'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.
Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd have to distinguish between potable water and just any water too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_water mentions that Christchurch, NZ has a sufficient supply of pure enough water that no treatment is required. So you could probably build a passive filtration system for a one time cost. It just may not be fast enough to treat enough water if your population is too big.
I live in Christchurch and I can confirm our water is AWESOME.
So's your coffee!
Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]
#97Here'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…
Dunedin in Florida filters 13,250,000 litres per day using reverse osmosis and claims 100% of water is recycled for drinking.
http://www.switchurbanwater.eu/outputs/pdfs/W1-1_1-2_GEN_PAP...
Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]
#99>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-...
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.
Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
"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...
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.