Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by Cthulhu_ » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:12 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #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 Cok…

Besides which, that water isn't lost; in the Netherlands, it either sinks into the soil to eventually become ground water again (after which it's reused), or it ends up in the sea via canals and rivers. It's not like we have a water shortage in NL, not yet anyway. Besides ground water, there are several rivers passing through NL coming from the Alps, sometimes to the point of overflowing.

Really, the only thing wasteful would be the energy needed to pump up and distribute the water. But we get some of the most efficient farmland in return, without harming anyone (unlike e.g. the US that caused the dustbowl thanks to overly aggressive farming)

edit: also that's only when irrigation is actually needed, we get our fair share of rain.

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

#132

Post by nashashmi » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:12 PM UTC

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…

This relates more to the information found online. But I think the original article is talking about how much water it takes to produce all of the ingredients as well.

It is not a very fair way of comparing one resource to another.

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

#133

Post by mrweasel » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:14 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #23

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…

You can't destroy water, but you can most definitely destroy fresh water. Or else you could have the same argument for just about anything ("I didn't really break your cup, all the pieces are still lying on the floor.")

>You can't destroy water

Sure you can: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_splitting

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

#134

Post by lkbm » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:14 PM UTC

meric wrote: post #61

TeMPOraL wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most our energy comes from fossil fuels. Even fertiliser for our food. So we can't just replace it all with solar power. One key questions for rulers and governments from antiquity is how to allow the population to gather energy to survive. It could be farming, or building oil wells and then hand out the profits or build a service economy around the oil. I couldn't figure out how to maintain a modern population witho…

> Most our energy comes from fossil fuels. Even fertiliser for our food. So we can't just replace it all with solar power.

That doesn't follow at all. Why not?

There's plenty of sunlight in the areas with most of the people, and the areas with most of the farmland. We have storage solutions--they're still a little expensive, but they're certainly getting close.

If our current energy came from hydroelectric or geothermal could we replace it with solar? Your statement seems like a complete non sequitur.

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

#135

Post by Retric » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:16 PM UTC

logicrook wrote: post #123

Retric wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little water is lost in municipal water filtration. The largest loss is generally evaporation from dam reservoir which is on the order of 10%. Depening on location temperature, humidity, ect. Don't forget you drink the same water you bathe with. At scale it's producing a lot of water. PS: Now a lot of water is lost after filtration by leaks/breaks in water pipes. But, that's mostly an economic choice as water is…

The point he is making is not reduced to that, it is that you should judge things with the same metrics. I.e. how much water is used for bottled water? For running water? How much harmful chemicals can you find in soft drink, bottled water, tap water? (because running water may be very cost-efficient, but it comes with a price, the dizzying quantity of chlorine you can find inside being one). Just giving one number o…

Despite what you might think water is not a particularly limited resource.

At the municipal level 1 cent ~= 1,000+ gallons of water but this can vary greatly by location. As a customer in many ways you are paying for pipes not water.

PS: California farmers often pay ~70$ on average per acre foot or 325,851 gallons. But, they also get a lot of water for far less than that it's the rare edge cases that are really expensive. http://westernfarmpress.com/water-70-24-million-acre-foot

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

#136

Post by jdmichal » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:16 PM UTC

PepeGomez wrote: post #54

spacehome wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Energy is about the only resource where this doesn't hold true.

Energy is the only resource I know about where there is a physical law stating that this must be true. (To be fair, you could have less energy offset by more mass. But the point stands.)

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

#137

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:18 PM UTC

olau wrote: post #130

TeMPOraL wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, it's not, that's a bit too simple. In reality, time is the metric the matters, human time. All that stuff you talk about costs human time to build. That's why it's not being built - it's cheaper to do something else. Once you have a robotic army capable of mining resources and building everything you want, including rebuilding itself, you can just have them throw up a bunch of solar panels and have enough energy…

I disagree. Human time is not a problem. Yes, in a moral world it would be the most important metric. But nowadays, labour is cheap and abunant. That's why we don't have robotic armies doing stuff all around us - it's cheaper to make people work. We're energy-bound as a civilization now (or, one could say, still).

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

#138

Post by nxzero » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:20 PM UTC

nxzero wrote: post #110

arviewer wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unclear how much you know about the topic, but there are a number of ways to desalinate salt water, including just mixing non-toxic saltwater with drinkable freshwater; that said, it requires 31 liters of freshwater to make one liter of saltwater drinkable. Normal saltwater has a salt concentration of 3.5% and to be drinkable that must be reduced to 1000 ppm (parts per million); which is to say, say for 100 liters of…

Not that I post for rep, or for that matter care about downvotes, but if you're expressing that the above comment was not of use, on-topic, opinionated, bad tone, etc. - it's not clear why. Please comment so that I might be able to address your concerns. Cheers!

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

#139

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:22 PM UTC

lkbm wrote: post #134

meric wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most our energy comes from fossil fuels. Even fertiliser for our food. So we can't just replace it all with solar power. One key questions for rulers and governments from antiquity is how to allow the population to gather energy to survive. It could be farming, or building oil wells and then hand out the profits or build a service economy around the oil. I couldn't figure out how to maintain a modern population witho…

> Most our energy comes from fossil fuels. Even fertiliser for our food. So we can't just replace it all with solar power. That doesn't follow at all. Why not? There's plenty of sunlight in the areas with most of the people, and the areas with most of the farmland. We have storage solutions--they're still a little expensive, but they're certainly getting close. If our current energy came from hydroelectric or geother…

This statement may be wrong but for different reasons - it boils down to just how much electricity vs. petroleum we need to use to make fertilizer. I don't know much about fertilizer manufacturing, but from a quick look at Wikipedia I think that for nitrogen ones we could conceivably replace natural gas with some other hydrogen source and run the whole Haber-Bosch stack off electricity.

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

#140

Post by smt88 » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:22 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #131

tim333 wrote: post #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 Cok…

Besides which, that water isn't lost; in the Netherlands, it either sinks into the soil to eventually become ground water again (after which it's reused), or it ends up in the sea via canals and rivers. It's not like we have a water shortage in NL, not yet anyway. Besides ground water, there are several rivers passing through NL coming from the Alps, sometimes to the point of overflowing. Really, the only thing waste…

> ends up in the sea via canals and rivers

That water is "lost" by any practical definition. For humans to use it again, it would have to be desalinated, which is expensive.