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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]

#101

Post by VLM »

nixy wrote: post #93
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…

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.

The mine that dug the iron that made your pipes contaminated a lot of water.

In the vegan world its standard to count every drop of rain that hit the livestock pasture as being used, therefore its fair to count the rain that ran off the factory roof where the pump was manufactured as used.

Wells don't dig themselves and although that doesn't happen often, it does take a lot of water to do it, and make the gear to do it, and get the diesel fuel out of the ground and onsite to run the drilling rig.

I drink every drop from a can/bottle, usually, but I am a bit wasteful in the kitchen sink and probably only half the tap water is swallowed. Not to mention my dishwasher uses 5 gallons or 10 gallons or whatever small number every time it cycles and washes my drinking cup (so my drinking cup's share is only maybe 1/2 cup of dishwasher cycle water, but, maybe I was only thirsty for 1/2 cup of water leading to 50% efficiency right there). And of course the dishwasher uses electricity (water) and detergent (water) and natgas to heat the water (contaminated fracking water).

I bet using the usual journalist sophistry techniques I could get your home sink up to 10:1 ratio pretty easy. Maybe not the hundreds to one ratio in the article, but close.

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

#102

Post by coldtea »

adrusi wrote: post #88
smoyer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Lots of comets burn up in the atmosphere. The water from that also ends up on the surface. No need to have one actually impact.

What water is that?

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

#103

Post by koralatov »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #28
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…

Speaking about markets for alternative solutions, I would very much appreciate more reusability in containers. Like the Germans do with (some sizes of) plastic Cola bottles - they get refilled , not recycled. We waste ridiculous amounts of energy on making throwaway packaging. Recycling helps limit the waste, yes, but more often than not it seems like an attempt to optimize an utterly broken solution that shouldn't h…

In a sad turn of events in Scotland, Barr moved away from reuse of bottles for Irn Bru and its other drinks at the end of last year: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-33985022

As a kid, I collected bottles from wherever I could find them, and returned them to get more juice, or stickers, or trading cards, or sweets. Some shopkeepers even gave you the money back in cash, rather than making you use it to buy something from them, and those were the preferred shops at which to return the bottles. When I visited Canada with family as a teenager, I diligently returned all the plastic bottles and cans I came across for the 5c refund.

Nowadays, I live in a poor part of town, and right up until Barr stopped the refund, I would see kids going around picking up Barr bottles and returning them. Whilst they were doing that, they'd usually (unprompted) pick up other bits of rubbish and drop them in the bin too, effectively cleaning as they went.

That 30p refund might not mean much to most people, but to some people, it means a lot --- and as an unintended benefit, it encouraged a certain conscientiousness and pride in the place they lived. I'm sad that they stopped it, and that's without even considering the environmental impact.

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

#104

Post by koralatov »

rwjwjuwjudf wrote: post #58
morsch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The higher mg caffeine / mL of coffee mitigates that a bit, probably so it's 2x as bad instead of 4x as bad.

Really? I don't drink coffee, but do drink tea, and I'm pretty sure that people drink them for reasons other than the raw caffeine content per ml.

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

#105

Post by VLM »

XorNot wrote: post #76
tomp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.")

The problem is absolute quantities mean nothing: water is a resource which depends on production capacity. So long as it is in sustainable excess there are no problems.

This is an interesting issue for young people today. I'm too old, but young people will have "fun" dealing with land west of the Mississippi being in a massive overpopulation bubble, and folks east of the Mississippi having more water than we know what to do with now, and with climate change we're supposed to have even more water leading to some interesting infrastructure problems.

For a bit less than 50 years I've heard continuous and constant boosterism that the burbs will migrate back into the city center. No really, this time we're serious about it, etc. Its a cliche now. However a much more interesting migration, is over the next generation or two, most of the west half of the USA will have to migrate back to the east half, assuming they want to drink water or grow plants. Its going to be interesting to watch, at least for today's younger kids to watch.

Note that the land will support some people. In 2030 the west is not going to be empty, any more than it was empty in 1830. It just won't have as many people as now.

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

#106

Post by nixy »

VLM wrote: post #101
nixy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The mine that dug the iron that made your pipes contaminated a lot of water. In the vegan world its standard to count every drop of rain that hit the livestock pasture as being used, therefore its fair to count the rain that ran off the factory roof where the pump was manufactured as used. Wells don't dig themselves and although that doesn't happen often, it does take a lot of water to do it, and make the gear to do…

The dishwasher etc is not part of producing the drinking water. It's just a way of consuming it.

But I get your point about the entire construction of the well. And the drilling rig, say it drills 500 wells in its life span. Then you have to consider the water that went in to building the rig, divided by 500. And the water that goes in to disassembly and recycling. And the water that went in to building the drill rig factory. And that went into building the tools that were used to build the factory. Etc.

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

#107

Post by PepeGomez »

ThomPete wrote: post #91
PepeGomez wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem?

http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drough...

That's nonsense. It's native to the Middle East, from the Levant to Pakistan. I see no good reason why growing it should be problematic in California. They either use it as an excuse to get more water for other crops, or they're doing something very wrong, though I have no idea what it could be.

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

#108

Post by ars »

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…

You have to define "used". To have drinking water, you need HUGE volumes of other water to dilute and clean it.

Only a small fraction of it is actually drawn for drinking, but rest still has to be there. So does that rest count or not?

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

#109

Post by JoeAltmaier »

nixy wrote: post #106
VLM wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mine that dug the iron that made your pipes contaminated a lot of water. In the vegan world its standard to count every drop of rain that hit the livestock pasture as being used, therefore its fair to count the rain that ran off the factory roof where the pump was manufactured as used. Wells don't dig themselves and although that doesn't happen often, it does take a lot of water to do it, and make the gear to do…

The dishwasher etc is not part of producing the drinking water. It's just a way of consuming it. But I get your point about the entire construction of the well. And the drilling rig, say it drills 500 wells in its life span. Then you have to consider the water that went in to building the rig, divided by 500. And the water that goes in to disassembly and recycling. And the water that went in to building the drill rig…

At some point, the infrastructure is a given. Then its all about marginal costs?

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

#110

Post by nxzero »

arviewer wrote: post #94
nxzero wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 saltwater, you'll lose at least 3.5 liters just to reclaim the freshwater itself.

Beyond that it'll depend on the system how much additional volume is lost in the desalination process; quick Google finds some systems that lose 20% of the volume per unit processed.

Lastly, your reference to energy consumption brings up an example of additional sources of water lose. Water used to cool systems, water used to clean systems, leaks/waste, etc.

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