A doctor told me that if you don't have a water filter, you are the water filter. That being said, the difference between the quality of most municipal tap water and bottled water is marketing dollars. In some countries, it is a fact that you have to boil the water before drinking it. I was so nervous about avoiding sickness on my last trip to a Latin American country that I used bottled water (on my doctor's recommendation) to rinse out my toothbrush and avoided salad.
Bottled water 'is immoral'
31–40 of 45 posts
Re: Bottled water 'is immoral'
#32"Drinking bottled water should be made as unfashionable as smoking, according to a government adviser" Yeah, and I think that telling other people what to do with their lives in order to prevent the emission of miniscule amounts of CO2 should be as unfashionable as smoking too, but hell, what would I know?
On the other hand, I did think it was pretty silly the other day when I saw water from New Zealand for sale here in California. Loading water onto a ship to ship it across more water to sell in a place which already has plenty of water seems pretty wasteful. But I said "silly", not "immoral".
> Loading water onto a ship to ship it across more water to sell in a place which already has plenty of water seems pretty wasteful.
Gee, I thought we were talking about California, for a second.
Re: Bottled water 'is immoral'
#33This reminds me of the people who shop at Whole Foods yet dont recycle and celebrities who drive hybrid cars yet live in 10k sq. ft. houses where the AC/heating bill is hundreds/month. Classic human paradox of how hard it is to do everything right and/or people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones
Re: Bottled water 'is immoral'
#34"Drinking bottled water should be made as unfashionable as smoking, according to a government adviser" Yeah, and I think that telling other people what to do with their lives in order to prevent the emission of miniscule amounts of CO2 should be as unfashionable as smoking too, but hell, what would I know?
The problem to he here is that the price of bottled water doesn't (evidently) reflect the true cost.
Driving a hummer, drinking bottled water, eating a big steak, taking airplanes everywhere. No prob, just pay for it. The price of these activities should be high enough that everyone is just delighted when someone does it, because the amount paid back into the commons makes it a great deal for everyone else.
That would end the moralizing, which doesn't make much sense in the first place (and is truly a hopeless way to influence anyone other than the choir anyway)
Re: Bottled water 'is immoral'
#35Well the way I look at this, we're paying for it right? Supply and demand, people.
Actually, the argument being made is that you're _not_ paying for it. The externalities -- degraded environment, pollution, economic damage, etc. -- are being passed on to the powerless in other countries, or to future generations. In economic jargon (or as much thereof as I remember from college) there are negative externalities which are unaccounted for in the current market price. I believe one of the arguments be…
Precisely. The 'correct' thing to do to strike a balance between freedom and preventing damage is to levy a tax to 'cancel out' the externality. If people really, really want their bottled water, they'll be free to buy it, but factored into that price will be the true costs.
That's the theory, anyway. Calculating those costs may not always be obvious.
Re: Bottled water 'is immoral'
#36Re: Bottled water 'is immoral'
#37Part of the problem is that our socialized, monopoly municipal water suppliers provide unhealthy, bad tasting water.
The United States has excellent drinking water, pretty much everywhere. Issues of taste are usually caused by old pipes on the "last mile" of the water's path. So, buy a Brita filter. That's a market that actually makes sense.
IMO Brita filtered water tastes worse than the water out of the tap. My parents bemoan unfiltered water, I'm the opposite. For the life of me I can't drink filtered water because I don't find it refreshing as it taste clinically sterile.
Re: Bottled water 'is immoral'
#38FTFA: 'A BBC Panorama documentary, "Bottled Water: Who Needs It?", to be broadcast tomorrow says that in terms of production, a litre bottle of Evian or Volvic generates up to 600 times more CO2 than a litre of tap water.' And? How much CO2 does a liter of tap water generate, and of all the ways I could reduce C02 generation, where does bottled water fit in? Does the use of bottled water create more C02 than, say, ra…
You know, the questions you're asking are valid. But one might well ask "When there are other sources of clean, potable water available, why is it necessary, or even desirable, to drink water imported all the way from Fiji." Is Fijian water qualitatively that much better than it justifies the relatively monumental effort of transporting it to Manhattan for consumption? I certainly won't deny that there are trendoids…
Well I'm going to do my part to save the environment. I'll cycle to work; thus eating more food and respiring less efficiently and producing more CO2. I'll also eat more healthily, get more greens in me and protein; thus producing more methane which is 25 times worse than CO2 emissions.
Also, for when I do need to drive, I'll switch to a hybrid. However, that requires a large amount of lead and acids that are extremely harmful to the environment and it also takes more energy to produce an hybrid car than is actually saved in the average use of the car.
I will personally help destroy the environment by doing EVERYTHING I've been told should SAVE IT. I fucking love irony!
Re: Bottled water 'is immoral'
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably driving it around in trucks?
Both, probably. Both plastic and the cost of shipping scale roughly with the cost of petroleum.
CO2 is irrelevant, even if production is switched to biodegradeable plant-based oils and shipping is done over short distance with a renewable energy source, people will still complain about bottled water.
They complained before global warming was even thought about, and they're just using fantasy CO2 statistics to bolster their claims. In fact, in some areas with low access to water, governments spend millions merely pumping water up elevations. I know where I live they have to do it, and we're only slightly up hill from the supplier. I wonder how much CO2 they're putting into the atmosphere by using vast quantities of power to pump water up a gradient, which is less efficient than merely moving it.
Re: Bottled water 'is immoral'
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both, probably. Both plastic and the cost of shipping scale roughly with the cost of petroleum.
CO2 is irrelevant, even if production is switched to biodegradeable plant-based oils and shipping is done over short distance with a renewable energy source, people will still complain about bottled water. They complained before global warming was even thought about, and they're just using fantasy CO2 statistics to bolster their claims. In fact, in some areas with low access to water, governments spend millions merel…
This is not some competition to show the wrongness of the other side. These are questions for action.
I'm having trouble seeing how one could design a pumping system so poor that it's cheaper to ship water via truck in miniature plastic bottles produced in industrial parks on average thousands of miles away. Even an Archimedes screw is close to optimal energy efficiency if you have a gear system.