Smart water and Plastics

I think all bottled water is a waste of resources, except for extreme situations such as disaster relief.

Buy a water bottle and fill it from the tap.

Tom

 

People piss and moan about carbon taxes/gas taxes and how they will "cripple the economy" and the 'free enterprise system", but they don't bat an eye to pay the equivalent of ~$4/gallon or more for bottled water that in most cases comes from the tap any way! We are it seems, increasingly a nation of morons!

 

is it #1? they may have a good reason, but recycling solves the problem.

 

I take filtered water from my under sink water filter when I go out or go to work. It has a carbon footprint I guess in that Adelaide water is pumped, but there is a carbon sequestration component to as the filter is a block of carbon sequestered under my sink.

 

No it doesn't. It's far better not to use the resources in the first place. Plus, turning a common good/natural resource into yet another corporate-controlled commodity is a huge mistake.

 

It still takes energy to make the bottles and recycle the bottles, and then there is all of the transportation. Water is heavy stuff.

Tom

 

We get water from a free artesan well outlet in Olympia. To carry it around, we have stainless steel bottles. Glass works well, too.
Thanks for that video, Dogfriend!

 

The fact that it's tap water?

Nothing personal, hybridtheory, but I'd say a campaign suggesting Aquafina uses less plastic than other "brands" of um...tapwater...is going to backfire.

Smart people drink tapwater, and aren't fooled by slick, misleading marketing. In fact, many smart people are suggesting bottled water be banned altogether, because it's a dumb idea. Schools in my area, and others, are taking it one step further, and thinking about banning bottled sugar water, too, not just bottled water. What do you think of that?

 

Buy?

I don't remember when my household last bought a water bottle, but it wasn't this century. Between free sports bottles from event goodie bags, reused bottles from other events where water is available only in that form, and an occasional reused soft drink bottle, there is no need to purchase them. At least until our civilization very sharply cuts back on the amount of plastic wasted in this form.

Single-use beverage bottles are the best water containers for ultralight hikers --a fraction of the weight of reusable containers marketed as water bottles, reusable a few dozen times, and generally available for free.

But if one is worried about chemicals leaching out of the plastic, then these bottles may be a concern. As is the water sold in them.

 

I like a little tougher bottle than the usual single use plastic bottle. Mine tend to get crushed under equipment and bashed into rocks.

Tom

 

Get a metal water bottle and fill it from the tap. The 20th century wars were over oil. The 21st century wars will be over water.

 

If you're worried about that, simply get a carbon filter for your drinking water.

Any fridge these days usually comes with one built-in, or it's easy to install a filter with a kit from your local home improvement store.

 

And plastic isn't like glass or metal. It degrades with heat and time. A few times through the recycling process, and you aren't getting the exact same stuff you started with. That's why disposable plastic items like bottles are usually recycled into permanent stuff like composite decking.

FDA regulations may even prevent or limit the amount of post consumer recycled plastic content in food containers. I know those 55 gal HDPE drums aren't supposed to be reused by food production companies. Which means you might be able to get them free to cheap from such a place, if you need rain barrels.

On another topic, what options are there for a faucet or undersink filter that removes arsenic? I would like to avoid the waste of a RO unit. Plus, they may not remove all forms of arsenic, specificly the uncharged ones.

 

There are many cartridge type filters that will remove heavy metals. You can buy them with two canisters, where the first holds a carbon prefilter, or as combined filter cartridge, where the carbon is contained in the same tube. The two cartridge units are more cost effective for most applications.

Tom

 

Many years ago I installed a 2 stage filter set under the kitchen sink. It takes standard filters sold by GE or other brands. I have a coarse filter in the first stage to get the larger stuff (we have old galvanized pipes - the house was built in 1958) and I have a 0.5 micron carbon filter for the second stage. I installed a dedicated tap in the sink for the filtered water.

Not sure if the 0.5 micron filter is good enough for Arsenic though. I did a quick search and found that there are dedicated Arsenic filters. Also found that our local Arsenic levels are very low as reported by the water district.

NSF International

NRDC: Arsenic in Drinking Water

NRDC: Arsenic and Old Laws - Chapter 1

 

Carbon won't do it for heavy metals, but as you say, there are dedicated filters for that.

Tom