Bottled water debate hits a boiling point

Over here, Coke-owned Mount Franklin just tastes weird, god knows what goes into bottling it. Many of the others taste like the plastic they are served in. And most the bottled water I've seen is way too acidic. We litmus tested Neverfail here in Sydney (would be perhaps the leading brand) and it was acidic enough to sterilise hospital equipment with. The tap water was perfect ph balance, but of course the amount of crud put in to keep it like that is a worry. I'd say for all the large cities I've ever been to, Sydney water is probably the best, but the fluoride is a mind-killer.

Bottom line is: can't wait to get my own property with a freshwater spring on site.

Originally posted by astronomine
The days of fresh, pure water can be obtained going "Into the Wild" status and away from the masses.

you wouldn't happen be bear grills from man vs wild eh?

[edit on 30-6-2008 by CommanderSinclair]

Their was a news special iw as watching, a month ro 2 ago, abc news i think...about bottled water. What they found was, Aquafina, only about 20% of its bottled water is filtered...the rest s literally just tap water. They were being accused my abc news, of charging $1.29 fo 16.9 oz. thats nealry 4 times the amount for a bottle water, as from the sink! Its asumed, the rest are doing the same.
I talked with 2 guys who visitd poland spring factory 10 years ago, 22 different men...thiir SI no spring or wel or lake.... they didnt ask, so they too, just assumed, man its probably tapwater... what a ripp off.
The botles on aquafina, do say reverse osmosis technology. Dalsani,(yuck) adds what they call, neglible amounts of salt, some kinda chloride(calcium?) and minerals.
to the rest, reverse osmosis is the only real safe treatment. I myself, have a double coutner filter, one has a flouride cartridge in it, and the other, a 2 micron carbon black filter.
www.pwgazette he has alot of cool filter stuff for not much. Thiers a cool coutnertop reverse osmosis sysytem, $120, and it just simply screws onto you exisitng faucet, like any over the coutner filter does.

reply to post by eradown


If you want extremely clean water, do the final filtering process yourself. Seems people are SPOILED to the fact that some people on this planet must drink water with feces in it.

Go the extra mile and understand the point I was making. Bottling water for use in any form of mass produced, commercially sold beverage is destroying the environment. Everything you drink is primarily comprised of water, it can't rain if the water is in a bottle with a price on it.

[edit on 6/30/2008 by Spoodily]

Jacques Cousteau's lovely granddaughter recently made a very sappy pitch to the Washington Press Club about how our fresh water supplies are in danger, and my GOD WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO??

Then someone from the audience said, "Um, what about desalinization? The oceans are full of water."

Man, it was funny. Cousteau's response was "I knew someone was going to say that." And that was all she had to say about it.

It IS all about control.

i had a local company come test my tap water. the chlorine was higher than my pool. the amount of impurities were off the scale. i put an electric current in it to seperate the bad from good and half the glass was raw sewerage. if you really want to scare yourself read your local water companies annual report. they say it's up to the consumer to protect yourself. i bought a whole house system had it independently tested....damn near pure. bottled water is a joke, unless it's shipped across state lines it doesnt need to conform to federal regs.

Originally posted by applebiter
Jacques Cousteau's lovely granddaughter recently made a very sappy pitch to the Washington Press Club about how our fresh water supplies are in danger, and my GOD WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO??

Then someone from the audience said, "Um, what about desalinization? The oceans are full of water."

Man, it was funny. Cousteau's response was "I knew someone was going to say that." And that was all she had to say about it.

It IS all about control.

Did they also suggest running our cars using perpetual motion devices? It's so EASY!!! Morons have all the answers!

reply to post by eradown


Copy that!!

Evening Eradown.

I can't drink anything but bottled water where I live. The tap water has a metallic taste and of course the a fore mentioned F&C. Sure, I cook with it but I have a shower filter as well.

This news article, in my opinion, suggests that we must rely on the government to supply us with clean water and not to be able to stock and store our own water as easily as before.
Sure, we can use anything to collect and store water, but is anything easier that going to the store and buying a case of it?

reply to post by Spoodily
You are missing my point. People buy water because the tap is not good. Flouride is unnecessary.Not adding flouride would immediately improve water. While water purification is necessary if psychiatric drugs are making it into the water supply it is because some bozo has decided that plebians should not be allowed to drink water that has been replenished by nature through rain. Furthermore in my area the bottled water does not set on the shelves long enough to interfer with the cycle of nature. The people responsible for the bad tap water are not drinking their own coolaid and neither will I or anyone else who knows what is going on.

reply to post by eradown


No one with any sense would drink water straight from the tap. Nevermind what may be "added" to it, it is being pumped to you through pipes that are probably pretty gross after years of use.

The day they force you at gunpoint to drink from the garden hose without the option of additional filtration on your end you have a point, otherwise you are buying into whatever Coke, Pepsi, Evian or whoever else you trust so much is offering you because you are paranoid of the water that comes piped to you. It makes no sense to me why you trust a faceless corporation so much and will drink whatever they put in the bottle.

Get it from the tap, filter it and watch with your own eyes and then put it in a plastic bottle you can reuse if it makes you feel better. Fill up 100 bottles and put them in your fridge for all I care. I linked Dean Kamen's water purifier and it seems really good, especially for the one time investment. It's guaranteed clean and clear.

PS

It's not the small amount of water on your local store shelves that bothers me, it how much is in warehouses, bottling factories, trucks, ships, trains, and all the stores around the world that adds up. Think about how much water it takes to fill every soft drink, energy drink, fruit juice from concentrate, bottled water, bottled tea, etc. etc. etc. The convenience factor will add up. They ban fireworks for the 4th of July now because it doesn't RAIN. Know what makes rain? Water that is sitting on a store shelf for the convenience of people who don't know better.


[edit on 7/1/2008 by Spoodily]

Tell ya what, considering there are about 5 times more shelf & cooler space allocated for the plastic bottles of Gatoraide, Poweraide, Coke, Pepsi, Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, Orange Crush, Diet Dr. Pepper, Cherry Dr Pepper, Chocolate Cherry Diet Dr Pepper, Mr Pibb... (you get my point) at pretty much every convenience or grocery store I've ever been in I'd like to see the primary problem addressed before the secondary one. Clearly more soft drinks are consumed from plastic bottles in this country than water. Once again, however, we see the focus being redirected away from the more serious problem purely because it's more difficult to address vs going after the easy target. (Try talking a soda junkie out of their caffiene/sugar/HFCS addiction sometime and you'll see what I mean).

The fact, however, that nobody in the huge money industry of environmental big brothering has targeted soft drinks in plastic bottles (or at least the even bigger money industry of the main stream media hasn't reported it as rabidly if they have been targeted) makes me wonder if this whole situation boils more closely down to exactly what's in bottled water vs bottled soft drinks. Let's see here... High Fructose Corn Syrup, anyone? The substance that makes the food industry go 'round? Combine that with the highly dangerous properties of the various food colorings, artificial sweetners, artificial flavorings, and preservative chemicals and you've got to wonder exactly what is motivating a full fledged war against bottled water when the shelf right next to the water is full of a far more sinister devil in disguise.

Either the powers that be recognize the addictive and almost slave inducing properties of these soft drinks and see every bottle of water purchased and consumed as a threat to their sugary snake oil, or the soft drink companies have shelled out some major money to the various agencies, organizations, and media outlets to keep their attacks away from the brown liquid gold. On this one I actually am leaning towards the former, mainly because most of the bottled water is owned by the same companies that produce the soft drinks, so it wouldn't make any sense for them to let one of their products be demonized while shelling out money to protect the other.

To be honest, it never ceases to amaze me when someone will criticize another person for buying a bottle of water... and then turn around and buy a plastic bottle of Coke without flinching. I could go on... I've actually talked with someone at work who was listing all the very valid dangers of flouride, chlorine, and impurites in our water and mentioned the whole Nazi Germany using Flouride for mind control experiments issue... ten seconds later I watched him buy 2 cans of Diet Coke and chug them down. THINK PEOPLE! The enemy here isn't water, in whatever form or safe source it comes from, municipal or bottled. In fact, notice that never mentioned in any of these articles are the various "flavored waters" that companies are now putting out. They're not trying to get you to stop using plastic bottles or act to protect water supplies or save oil... they don't even give a damn if you're drinking tap water at home or at work. What their ultimate goal is is to get the consumer to have a moment of pause when they're at the grocery store or gas station and instead of reaching for that bottle of Fiji, reach one shelf over in the anem of "protecting the environment" and grab that bottle of water that's been "enhanced" with all the crap they need us to consume daily in the world's largest science experiment of chemical food substances.

reply to post by burdman30ott6


I don't know burdman30ott6, I think they are going after bottled water because everyone can get it out of the tap, but coke and other products are not available through the tap, so they must be purchased & transported in containers. Thus buying water in the same containers is seen as unnecessary and wasteful because it is transported to the tap to every home.

As long as I have a choice I don't care - If I'm at home I can use a filter, if I'm traveling I expect to be able to buy it in a bottle if necessary. Sometimes I want the convenience of a bottle or bladder especially when doing recreation etc..

off topic, this is more about where is our water going...
i ahve some theories...
I work for a retail store. Every month, we go through outdates, meaning pulling near or expired products off the shelfs, which is more me directly involved. Every month or 2 we average about 2 to 3 shopping carriages full of juice, water, diet drinks...allmsotly made of water. We throw them into the dumpster/ from their to landfill now. Me personally, for years, i at least dump it down the drain, so that the water retains its balance with nature. Its agut feeling i have.
Aother is, look at ALL the water used for nuclear generators.. the spent water for uranium rods.. ALL that water is oil drummed, and sent underground, not being recirculated back into nature, understandably in this case.
SO, thats just one store doing that, with outdates. ALL retail stores do it, and ide imagine bigger stores with moe bulk items throw out 3 to 4 times more.
Just my 2 cents.
Oh, and thier was that test NASA did not too long ago, where they let a ton of water out into space just to see what would happen....wonder how many times theyve REALLY waisted water like that.

This is completely silly.

So many lame excuses to get rid of bottled water.

"Its bad for the environment"

Plastic bottles are bad for the environment, but bottled water makes up less than 10% of plastic bottle waste!

Softdrinks like Coca Cola are the real culprit here. Not only is Corn Syrup bad for you, contrary to popular belief the water that goes into Softdrinks is plain tap water that goes through a very light filter.

We have a Coca Cola plant in Shreveport, LA and the water used in manufacturing is Shreveport Municipal Water. They use a filter that looks like it was made to stop large particles aka dirt and rust from getting in but thats it.

The Pepsi in the area I think may be bottled in Alexandria, LA. I'll have to check on that, but I can confirm that many people in Shreveport won't buy bottled Pepsi due to the fact it tastes like it has Garden dirt and pesticide in it. Someone really needs to check out the water in it.

"tap water is good for you or just as good as bottled water"

That is false. Just here in Caddo Parish much of the water in the area is not fit for human consumption. Notices are regularly sent out letting people know when to not drink the water, especially due to parasites and broken treatment equipment. Many places have old systems that are falling apart and this is true around the country. So its even worse than just fluoride in the water.

Most bottled water on the other hand, even if municipal water, is highly filtered. It is equal or better to water produced by good home filtering systems. I'm not talking about a silly Brita pitcher that adds strawberry flavor to your city water. I'm talking about a good filtering system that actually filters the water. Good home filtering systems are expensive and simply cannot be afforded by the average American.

Basically my point is this, This is crap. The people behind this may have good intentions of which I'll remind people of this quote, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

At the same time something just doesn't feel right. This is going to hurt average Americans more than anything. I can see people saying "oh don't drink that bottled water its bad for the earth, but here drink this corn syrup, carbon dioxide and unfiltered tap water in a plastic bottle." I should also mention that some softdrinks are now starting to use Nitric Oxide with their Carbonation. I'll remind people that Nitric Oxide has been connected to creating Nitric acid in rainwater, you know it better as Acid Rain. That really makes me wonder: Why are they putting something in my A&W that comes from car exhaust?

I'll let the anti-clean water propagandists now get back to work. Fnord!

Originally posted by eradown
If they really want people to drink their crummy water they should not put flouride in water...

A star for that! That's precisely why most people turned to bottled water in the first place, because they were unsure about how the added poison affected their health. Now it seems they need an advertising campaign to try to convince people that their "water" is safe.
And if flouride bothers you, don't trust the home filtering systems. Pura Tap here in Australia started advertising about a year ago bragging how their systems are so good, they don't remove fluoride at all...

[edit on 1/7/08 by NuclearPaul]

i grew up drinking tap water, im ok with it

reply to post by MikeboydUS


Glad you brought this up.
Walmart has Pepsi 2 Litres for 1.00$ (Never been this price before)

When i got home, threw some ice in my cup, poured the pepsi, when I tasted it....guess what it tasted like. Sewage water, or retention pond water.

Disgusting!!!! Don't drink PEPSI Products!

[edit on 1-7-2008 by CommanderSinclair]

Tap water in the UK is actually better for you then the bottled water available.

Chew on this - our species grew up without sanitation for hundreds of thousands of years, I think we will cope.

reply to post by Unsane


yea but we werent drinking our own "purified" crap for the most part. or fluoride and drugs either. i doubt the people living in the rural areas were drinking out of anything other than a well.

I started a thread like this a couple years ago.

Is Bottled Water Better Than Tap Water?

We had a very interesting discussion and a lot of information was brought to the table.

Bottled Water - Pure Drink or Pure Hype?

Gaps and Loopholes in FDA Regulations
1. Water bottled and sold in a single state -- the majority of bottled water sold in the United States -- is not covered by FDA rules, according to FDA.

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2. FDA's definition of "bottled water" covered by its standards irrationally exempts many types of bottled water.

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3. Even water defined as "bottled water" is not specifically required to meet treatment, contamination, or testing standards as strict as those applicable to city tap water.

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Weaker bacteria rules for bottled water.

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No treatment requirements to remove or kill bacteria and parasites in bottled water.

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No Cryptosporidium and Giardia testing for bottled water.

Just some of the "lack" of regulation that the bottled water industry enjoys!

Here's some more very interesting articles!

The Bottled Water Lie

That's because tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which imposes strict limits on chemicals and bacteria, constant testing by government agencies, and mandatory notification to the public in the event of contamination.

Bottled water, on the other hand, is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which according to federal law is technically required to hold itself to the same standards as the EPA. The devil is in the details, however, since FDA regulations only apply to water that is bottled and transported between states, leaving out the two-thirds of water that is solely transported within states. State laws, meanwhile, are inconsistent, with some mirroring the FDA standards, some going beyond them and some falling far short of the national regulations. What's more, FDA regulations rely on companies to do their own testing, and perform voluntary recalls if products are found to be in violation of standards

Health: What's in that Water Bottle Anyway?

1⁄4 of bottled water is reprocessed tap water (e.g. Aquafina & Dasani).

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The WHO's Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality point out that although some substances are more easily controlled in bottled water, the warmer temperatures and longer periods of storage allow microorganisms to grow to higher levels than in tap water.

And, here's another link

Is America's $8 Billion Bottled Water Industry a Fraud

The bottled water industry is not regulated as closely as your tap water is!

And if bottled water is bottled and sold within the same state, there is hardly any regulations at all for them to do any testing. And even then, they can do the testing themselves! Everybody say it with me now, "This is a conflict of interest!"

True, in some areas bottled water may be safer than your tap water, but don't assume that just because your water is coming out of a bottle instead of the tap that it is better!

[edit on 7/1/2008 by Keyhole]