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Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

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Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#111

Post by lopmotr »

temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #48
djsumdog wrote: post #4

Bottled water is a scam. It's less regulated than municipal tap water in most developed nations, companies suck up water from small towns and use tons of fuel to ship it out of those watersheds and then charge people 1000% markup. For countries without clean water, the effort should be put into getting municipal water supplies. Don't buy plastic disposable water bottles if you live in a developed nation. They prop up…

Bottled water is a classic example of profiting off of regulatory arbitrage. In well-developed countries, bottled water is easy money: move to a friendly jurisdiction, ship a transportable product out, and sell to a self-selecting, discretionary customer base at obscene markups. It's pure profit. In less-developed countries, bottled water is enabled by and further perpetuates structural inequality: it provides clean…

It's bad to perpetuate structural inequality within a country but not between countries? Or do you also agree that it's wrong for developed countries to have clean tap water because it gives their citizens an advantage over citizens of poorer countries? Preventing disease is very simply a good thing. How can you possibly say that you want people to be sick just to make life more fair?

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#112

Post by lopmotr »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #22

Now that we know that microplastics are in our water supply, what do we do to protect ourselves? Do reverse osmosis filters, etc, at home get rid of these plastics? It certainly sounds dangerous and scary but I don't know what I need to do or should do, which is frustrating.

You've skipped a step. Before protecting yourself, what not find out what harm it causes? Sounding scary is not the same as being scary. Everything in the news sounds scary, that's why it's in the news, not because it's a real problem that needs to be solved.

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#113

Post by chimeracoder »

petre wrote: post #30
foobaw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I visited India, the locals recommended me to always drink bottled water or else I'd get really sick. Maybe in the US, it can be solved on a city-by-city basis. For some other countries, I think it's a much more complex problem.

Morocco as well. Be sure to check the seal because they refill them with tap water and sell it on the street. You can get sick even from washing your teeth with tap water. Sick as in ruin your vacation, not sick as in really sick.

> You can get sick even from washing your teeth with tap water. Sick as in ruin your vacation, not sick as in really sick.

I mean, I'd call HAV "really sick". Even for people who clear the infection without assistance and no long-term complications, it's rather involved and goes far beyond simply "ruin your vacation".

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#114

Post by chimeracoder »

koolba wrote: post #81
guskel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say all you want but tap water just doesn't taste as good. Fix that problem and people won't mind switching.

I’ll take NYC tap water against any bottled water worldwide. Sure it’s totally subjective and anecdata, but my sample size is over 100 brands in 20+ countries.

> I’ll take NYC tap water against any bottled water worldwide.

Me too, but NYC is a major outlier when it comes to water quality. NYC water was, quite literally, sold as bottled water for a while.

Most other places in the country have nowhere near the quality of tap water that NYC has.

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#115

Post by haldora »

lopmotr wrote: post #108
djsumdog wrote: post #4

Bottled water is a scam. It's less regulated than municipal tap water in most developed nations, companies suck up water from small towns and use tons of fuel to ship it out of those watersheds and then charge people 1000% markup. For countries without clean water, the effort should be put into getting municipal water supplies. Don't buy plastic disposable water bottles if you live in a developed nation. They prop up…

Having a 1000% markup doesn't make it a scam. The raw material is practically free so anything they charge is going to be a huge markup. There's lots of competition and people are willing to buy it. What's wrong with that? You're not paying for the water, but for all the other value that comes along with it. You can carry it around, or store it in your car, or whatever. You don't have to remember to fill up the water…

> What's wrong with using tons of oil? It's not being burnt so it doesn't contribute to climate change. Are you concerned that it's wasting the valuable oil that would be better used to power a car or power station?

Instead of having a VLCC bringing crude to a Gulf Coast refinery where a large part is converted into propylene for bottle and cap production, the crude could be kept safely in its original well, unused. If the demand for propylene (et al) is reduced, refiners would alter their production to make less, ultimately lowering their crude intake, ceteris paribus.

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#116

Post by rekado »

lopmotr wrote: post #108
djsumdog wrote: post #4

Bottled water is a scam. It's less regulated than municipal tap water in most developed nations, companies suck up water from small towns and use tons of fuel to ship it out of those watersheds and then charge people 1000% markup. For countries without clean water, the effort should be put into getting municipal water supplies. Don't buy plastic disposable water bottles if you live in a developed nation. They prop up…

Having a 1000% markup doesn't make it a scam. The raw material is practically free so anything they charge is going to be a huge markup. There's lots of competition and people are willing to buy it. What's wrong with that? You're not paying for the water, but for all the other value that comes along with it. You can carry it around, or store it in your car, or whatever. You don't have to remember to fill up the water…

Oil is a limited resource that can be used for way more important things than disposable water bottles, such as medical supplies (syringes, IV bags, etc) and durable plastics components. Plastics themselves are a great resource that should not be wasted, not least because of the amount of energy and water it takes to produce them.

Most plastic bottles are burnt, so they do contribute to climate change; the small percentage of bottles that actually are recycled cannot be turned into new bottles --- plastics are always downcycled; recycled plastics are sometimes mixed in with virgin plastic pellets, but it's usually a relatively small amount of the total.

(I'm setting up an educational project for school classes on the topic of plastic recycling and renewable energy.)

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#117

Post by zolthrowaway »

lopmotr wrote: post #108
djsumdog wrote: post #4

Bottled water is a scam. It's less regulated than municipal tap water in most developed nations, companies suck up water from small towns and use tons of fuel to ship it out of those watersheds and then charge people 1000% markup. For countries without clean water, the effort should be put into getting municipal water supplies. Don't buy plastic disposable water bottles if you live in a developed nation. They prop up…

Having a 1000% markup doesn't make it a scam. The raw material is practically free so anything they charge is going to be a huge markup. There's lots of competition and people are willing to buy it. What's wrong with that? You're not paying for the water, but for all the other value that comes along with it. You can carry it around, or store it in your car, or whatever. You don't have to remember to fill up the water…

>What's wrong with using tons of oil?

Plastics are incredibly useful. Tons upon tons of bottles end up in landfills, oceans, etc. Even with plastic recycling, PET yields aren't 100%. There is only so much oil and eventually the plastics we have will cease to be recyclable.

I'm not trying to say that it's wrong to use a disposable plastic bottle from time to time. There's not anything wrong with having a case of water. But no one with access to clean water should primarily use disposable bottles. It's lazy and shortsighted.

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#118

Post by acdanger »

alfanick wrote: post #67
vatys wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get a reverse osmosis system for ~$150. Maybe not cheap, but not super expensive either. Even if you're renting for a year and leave it behind that's less then $0.50 a day over one year.

Which leaves you with classical-clean-US-water - no taste, nothing. Doesn't taste good, doesn't taste bad, it's just not there.

The best-tasting glass of water I've ever had was at the Galway Bay Hotel in Ireland. It tasted like slightly sweet and mossy. I've wanted to recreate that flavor in water ever since, but have no idea where to start.

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#119

Post by frockington »

kartan wrote: post #61
Retric wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25% of US municipal drinking water fails Safety standards: https://www.popsci.com/drinking-water-standards Those standards are also very loose IMO letting a lot of crap though that I don't want to drink on a regular basis. So, it's really more of a mixed bag than you might think.

> Don't buy plastic disposable water bottles if you live in a developed nation I´m playing with semantics here. But some parts of USA hardly count as developed states. As a country, the USA is overachieving in a lot of measures, but individual states found themselves at the same level than developing nations. It´s difficult to apply the same rule to 10,000,000km2 of territory and 325 Million people.

Does that mean the US can get officially recognized as a developing nation and get all the perks? Guaranteed the US would start pushing more initiatives like the Paris Climate Accord if they got the economic benefits, would be great for the climate change movement

Re: Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study

#120

Post by acdanger »

kian wrote: post #37
awareBrah wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do you suggest for people who cannot tolerate the taste of some tap water. The one in my area taste very metallic and makes tea/coffee brewed with it have an unpleasant flavor. I bought a brita-like water filter with great reviews on amazon, but despite that, some of the metallic flavor remains. My old home had a reverse osmosis system which tasted amazing, but I'm not going to invest in a super expensive water…

get a megahome distiller. Doesn't require installation, so you can take it with . you when you laeve. Be prepared to be disgusted by the residue remaining.

does it also make moonshine?
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