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Liquid assets: how the business of bottled water went mad
- teslabox 10y agoThe World Health Organization has a report titled "Health risks from drinking demineralised water". The main problem is that water without minerals upsets the osmotic balance and leads to lysing (rupture) of the cells lining the stomach. The WHO has moved stuff on their site, but I think this document is one source: http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutrientschap12.pdf http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutrientschap... Coffee grounds are a good filter for removing heavy metal contaminants from water: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/24/science/coffee-grounds-filter-heavy-metals-water.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/24/science/coffee-grounds-fil...
- 50CNT 10y agoIt just gets more and more complex, doesn't it. Now we have to worry about remineralizing RO water. [Tap Water] | V [Water Softener]------------+ | | V V [Reverse Osmosis System] [Showering & Washing] | V [Remineralizer] | V [RO storage tank] | V [Drinking]
- seanp2k2 10y agoYeah, I always wondered why there isn't simply one line running to the bathrooms + laundry room with softened water, and a separate line which goes through RO for everything else. Putting a RO + tank under the sink but the softener in the garage / basement seems backwards to me; I know nothing about plumbing but it would seem to make more sense to have a small softener under the bathroom sink just for the shower.
- gh02t 10y agoYou put the softener at the inlet to the house because you don't want to have hard water flowing through the pipes in your house. Hard water precipitates minerals that ruin the piping, hence you put the softener at the main inlet.
- Sonthun 10y agoThe softened water is for more than just comfort of use though. It keeps the hard water from depositing in the pipes and any of the devices that have water pass through them. It was interesting when we installed a better softening system that our water heater started putting out hotter water since the elements got cleared of the deposits. It also stopped making creepy sounds.
- 50CNT 10y agoFrom what I've gathered, hard water also lowers the life expectancy of the RO system.. Also you may want softer water for cleaning dishes, since softer water means better lather with less soap, saving your detergent.
- abrie 10y agoIn Len Beadell's book "Blast the Bush", he describes a solution (pun?) developed while building the Woomera Rocket Range. Apparently the groundwater had a terrible taste; so they built a distillation facility. But the distilled water was unpalatable because it was too pure. So, they experimented by mixing distilled water with small amounts of groundwater, eventually arriving at a drinkable ratio.
- onlycommenting 10y agoYup. Potable vs. Palatable drinking water.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoThat's actually exactly what I came up with when designing how I'd do it some years ago. I didn't bother as our tap water is good out here. The only difference is I had a greywater (or whatever they call it) system in the design for reusing stuff for garden, toilet flushing, water guns used on non-household people with minimal filtering, whatever.
- CydeWeys 10y agoWho's drinking demineralized water though? All of the bottled water commonly available for sale is not demineralized, at least to my knowledge.
- mrob 10y ago>water without minerals upsets the osmotic balance and leads to lysing (rupture) of the cells lining the stomach I've heard many people claim this but I've never seen any convincing evidence that it actually happens in vivo. Even if you pour it directly down the throat, ultra-pure water stops being ultra-pure as soon as it hits the stomach. There's no way it can touch any gastrointestinal cells before it's contaminated. Your linked article even acknowledges this. "currently available data have not unambiguously demonstrated a direct negative effect of low mineral content water on the gastrointestinal mucous membrane." It also cites an animal study showing no damage: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8434446 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8434446 Water can be an important source of dietary minerals, but the health impact of this depends on what else you're eating. I agree it makes sense to have minerals in drinking water, for the taste as well as the possible health benefits, but missing them is not actively dangerous.
- Theodores 10y agoI think part of this is to do with the 'hydrate' word. Years ago, before water was advertised on television there was this word 'thirsty'. Sometimes, on a hot day or after some strenuous activity you might be 'thirsty' and need to have a drink of tea or maybe just plain water for instant refreshment. The water came from the tap, where else? But then times changed. Nowadays people don't listen to their bodies and drink accordingly. The advertisers have told people that they need to buy water and drink it to avoid getting dehydrated - 'mustn't get dehydrated'... Tapwater is inconceivable to this demographic, it has to be the stuff in plastic bottles (water cooler included). I also like the way old-fashioned drinks are a slightly sociable thing. If I make tea I do it for everyone, we take turns. Meanwhile the 'hydrationists' sort their own bottled water arrangements out, it is not a shared thing. I also like the way that tap water gets to your door. There are pumping stations, pipes and this thing called gravity!!! Meanwhile, the 'hydrationists' need little men driving big lorries full of water across continents, more little people in shops stacking shelves with this stuff, time out of their day to go to the shops to buy this stuff and the money to pay for it. I don't see myself as that special, tap water is more me (60% or so...), you are what you drink.
- hueving 10y agoMany people don't drink from the tap because they are convinced it's bad water (which is true in corner cases at least in the US). Everyone I know who drinks bottled does it because of this and it has nothing to do with this 'hydration' ritual you are theorizing.
- jacquesm 10y agoThe water peddlers have successfully convinced people in places where the water is perfectly safe to drink (and tasty too) that it isn't. There are plenty of places in the world where the water isn't safe to drink but a very large portion of those is so poor the people there could not afford bottled water anyway. But for places with old water lines and all kinds of junk in the water it can make good sense to use bottled water for consumption.
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- tomjen3 10y agoTap water is awesome when you are home and it doesn't taste like crap. Bottled water is awesome when I am at the gym, or out and about. I really don't get why the left hate water bottles so fucking much, it has become quite tiresome.
- collyw 10y agoBecause they are an environmental disaster with no need for them. Get a refillable water bottle and take that to the gym.
- seanp2k2 10y agoWhy does the US continue to let plastic bottles of water (or anything) be sold? I agree that it's terrible for the environment. I'm guessing that the reason is "lobbyists" :(
- tedunangst 10y agoIs the US somehow unique in selling plastic bottles? Why don't those environmentally conscious countries ban plastic?
- thaumasiotes 10y agoPaper bottles failed to catch on. ;)
- GordonS 10y agoWhy not fill a bottle with tap water from your home and take that with you when out and about?
- EliRivers 10y agoI really don't get why the left hate water bottles so fucking much, it has become quite tiresome. What I don't get is this lazy, ridiculous partisan politics bullshit. That has become extraordinarily tiresome. "The left hate water bottles". WTF are you talking about? A water bottle is a device for putting water in. WTF does left-leaning politics have to say about that? Did the British labour party have elimination of water bottles as one of their manifesto pledges? Did the Weather Underground declare war on water bottles? Maybe I missed the bit where Al Gore [1] invoked a committee examining how to remove the scourge of water bottles. When Baader-Meinhof assassinated a banker, did they have a parallel plot to take out a bottle factory? Did the Comintern have a working party identifying water bottle plants to eliminate after the revolutions? [1] Who actually represents a right-wing political party, but WTF, I'm already flowing [2]. [2] Pun intended.
- golemotron 10y agoCapitalism metastasized when bottled water replaced public drinking fountains in the 90s and 00s.
- Aloha 10y agoI on average drink 120-150 oz of water a day (sometimes a portion of this is unsweet iced tea, or diet soda), since I started doing this, I've lost weight and generally feel healthier. So several years ago, I got in the habit of lugging around a large beverage container (http://www.whirleydrinkworks.com/productinfo.php?prod-code=XM-64&cat=cw&sub=i http://www.whirleydrinkworks.com/productinfo.php?prod-code=X...) 9 times out of 10 its just tap water I put in the thing. I only drink bottled water when I'm in a position where I can't get access to fill my beverage container from the tap - or when due to security or other factors I'm unable to bring my large beverage cup, but bottled water is allowed. Bottled water (usually purchased in a 1.5l, 2l or 1gal container) is something I purchase only for convenience when I simply don't have access to any tap water at all.
- dawnerd 10y agoPretty much same as you, although sadly a lot more of my fluid intake is in the form of coke zero which I'm trying to break. I only keep bottled water around in case of emergency. I've found that after I bought a large Nalgene bottle I drink a lot more water.
- the_economist 10y agoTry switching to green tea + l-theanine. I went from coke -> coffee -> tea without a problem. The main addiction is to the caffeine.
- duncanawoods 10y ago> The main addiction is to the caffeine. I'm not so sure. I think there is something else about it that makes it habit forming. When dieting I sometimes get into a 10 can a day habit with fairly strong cravings despite a high caffeine intake from coffee. The cravings are not too hard to overcome - a few days of abstinence and they go away. I don't notice health/well-being differences with or without it. The main motivation to quit is because lugging crates of the stuff home is a damn nuisance!
- nfriedly 10y agoI live in the countryside in Ohio. We have a well and a water softener. But my kitchen sink has a second faucet that goes directly to the well, bypassing the softener - I always drink from that one because it tastes better. I fill up my Nalgene before I leave and only buy bottled water on rare occasions. I used to live in San Mateo, they had pretty good tap water to.
- schwap 10y agoInteresting -- most water softener setups I have seen are only plumbed into the hot water, I've been told that this is because drinking softened water is not recommended.
- nfriedly 10y agoHum. This is the first house I've ever owned, and this is the 3rd or 4th thing I've been told wasn't "normal" about it. The previous owner also ran a construction company, and I'm pretty sure he did a lot of work on this house himself, so it wouldn't surprise me if this is another instance of that. For the most part, though, everything works well enough. So I'm happy overall.
- draw_down 10y agoWhat I don't get: why is a bottle of Coca-Cola better than a bottle of water? And, well... what else are you supposed to do if you aren't going to be near a faucet for a while?
- Sharlin 10y agoUh. You fill a purpose-made reusable container with water and take it with you. What do you think people did before bottled water became a thing?
- wtbob 10y agoOr, y'know, just wait, also like people used to do. One won't die without frequent sips of water. I remember once seeing a women in a church service with her mandatory stylish bottle of water. Now, it's certainly possible that she had an actual medical issue requiring frequent hydration, and it's certainly possible that she was also of a social class such that the stylish water bottle was the reasonable way to address her medical issue — but Ockham's Razor suggests not. Water's great. Honestly, I like the idea of a water sommelier: having the opportunity to taste different waters sounds cool. I love the idea of drinking water thousands of years old (although I wonder how trustworthy the supplier are: it'd be a lot cheaper just to distil tapwater than to net chunks of iceberg). But the social signalling aspect is just weird. We pay millions of dollars for good, clean drinking water. And it is — outside of hellholes like Flint, MI — pretty damned good stuff. Why buy it as a matter of course?
- samstave 10y agoMy family owns a water company in Lake Tahoe, I've been wanting to bottle it for years, but there is a law that won't allow us to do so. I live in alameda, and I drink the tap water - I love it. I have kleen canteen I keep with me almost always with water in it, and I try to avoid bottled water as much as possible mostly because I don't like the plastic waste
- samstave 10y agoI stayed at a hotel that offered complimentary bottle of water in the room, I think this was in Dallas. I read the label and they stated that the water source was the municipal water supply - so it was the same as tap water...
- Symbiote 10y agoCoca Cola's brand "Dasani" is bottled tap water. I'm from Britain, where the product was withdrawn after terrible publicity, and following that it was never launched in the rest of Europe. I hadn't realised it still existed in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani ("Can't live without spunk" is unbelievably bad advertising too. Spunk is slang for semen...)
- foobarian 10y agoTime to point out what Evian spells when read backwards...
- strictnein 10y agoTime to point out that Evian is a place in France where the company originated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89vian-les-Bains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89vian-les-Bains
- ars 10y ago> He liked the can, too – more environmentally friendly than a plastic bottle Say what? Plastic bottles are much more environmentally friendly. Sigh, if people can't even agree on what is and isn't good for the environment there is zero chance of actually improving it. (Or maybe we've reached the max and the only things left to argue about is little irrelevant things.)
- gh02t 10y agoYeah, I'm kind of wondering where that comes from... I guess because PET is a petroleum product? There's so much more to it than that though, it's silly to simplify things that far.
- tedunangst 10y agoLiterally made from carbon!