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]

#121

Post by mbarrett » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 1:51 PM UTC

SixSigma wrote: post #97

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…

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...

For comparison, a big-box purchased reverse osmosis home setup could have up to a 4:1 waste water ratio.

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

#122

Post by DougN7 » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #82

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…

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…

To compare to this article you'd also have to calculate the amount of water used to make the pipes, dig the ditches, create the machinery to dig the ditches (and pro-rate the machinery's life time against the amount of time it's used to dig water pipe trenches), fuel used, etc, etc.

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

#123

Post by logicrook » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #82

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…

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 out of your hat is a dishonest persuasive move (unless everybody already knows the numbers for all the previous questions), precisely because the author knows very well that most people cannot put that number into perspective. This is not a very scientific attitude for something published in a 'scientific' journal.

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

#124

Post by atemerev » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:00 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #112

atemerev wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even given the cost overruns, insurance, nuclear pools, etc it is quite cheap. The only problem with nuclear power is that it is highly centralized and requires significant upfront capital expenditures. And political consequences of radiophobia are so high that investing in nuclear power is limited. I think that solar and nuclear are the only sustainable power generation methods these days. The rest are either bad fo…

Radiophobe here. I can't accept the morality of handing stewardship of spent nuclear fuel to my children and their children for a thousand generations. Would you still want to be caring for a monster left to us by the people who wrote on cave walls? As far as a DGR, I'll believe it when a nation other than Finland has shovels in the ground to actually build one.

1) Breeder reactors are reducing the amount of spent fuel to store about 100x. Existing nuclear waste can also be reprocessed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reductio...

2) What monster could be left by stone-age people to us that modern technology couldn't handle?

Modern spent fuel processing methods are great and quite safe (vitrification / underground disposal). I can't imagine a newsworthy worst case scenario with vitrified containers.

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

#125

Post by vonmoltke » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #98

evgen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

Nitpick:

Concrete (as well as mortar, stucco, and other such products) is made locally, both dry and wet mix. Cement is made in remote areas, typically near the limestone quarries, because the process involves large, dirty, smelly kilns.

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

#126

Post by Retric » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:08 PM UTC

DougN7 wrote: post #122

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…

To compare to this article you'd also have to calculate the amount of water used to make the pipes, dig the ditches, create the machinery to dig the ditches (and pro-rate the machinery's life time against the amount of time it's used to dig water pipe trenches), fuel used, etc, etc.

Your scale is off. The city of Philadelphia for example loses 60 million gallons per year to leaks out of 250 million gallons pumped from the river. (excluding leaks at the home and business level estimated at 1trillion gallons per year in the US.)

To get anywhere close to similar levels from the article you replacing there entire system every 20 years would need to take 20 * 60m * 340 = 408 Trillion gallons of water.

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

#127

Post by lisivka » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:08 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #72

lisivka wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our planet is getting hot, so we will have lot of vapor -> rains -> fresh water. Just collect it instead of dumping it into river or ocean.

I'm not so sure about this. Water -> vapor -> water loop only works if there's a temperature gradient - you need heat to vaporize water and coldness to condense vapor into water again. If the whole planet is getting hotter, the atmosphere could simply get more humid, with no more rain/fresh water.

We have such temperature gradient every night. We have lack of rains in some areas because they are too hot at evening, because of deforestation, but this is an another story.

We also can create temperature gradient by adding shade at some areas, e.g. using SO2 at altitude of about 20km.

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

#128

Post by SixSigma » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:08 PM UTC

mbarrett wrote: post #121

SixSigma wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

For comparison, a big-box purchased reverse osmosis home setup could have up to a 4:1 waste water ratio.

Yeah, I was amazed both when I saw how much water got wasted in home RO and how much wasn't wasted in industrial RO!

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

#129

Post by at-fates-hands » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:09 PM UTC

I just saw a CNBC documentary about the issue of water shortages in India and how Pepsi is at the heart of the controversy. The interesting thing was how many people Pepsi employs, but is accused of contributing to the ongoing water shortages because is their plants in the area.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/44963631

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

#130

Post by olau » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:11 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #37

evgen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes energy, not time. It takes a long time if you passively wait for random environmental processes to slowly replace the water, and a very short amount of time if you actively apply energy to the problem.

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 for desalination.