planetwater

Yesterday, my girlfriend bought a water bottle. When I saw the back, my immediate reaction was a positive surprise, because what I saw, seemed to be a hydrogeologic cross-section. And that can’t be a bad thing, right?

Label of a German Water Bottle

Unfortunately, some thoughts came to my mind which don’t add up everywhere… Let’s look a little closer at that label:

Enlarged Label of a German Water Bottle

• The first layer, indicated in green, is labeled “earth- and rock- layers” — does the green indicate that in these layers are living plants? Why does the text indicate that there are multiple layers, and the picture shows only one green layer?
• The second layer is called “ground- and surface water”. Why should they be mixed? And why is the surface water below the ground surface under earth- and rock- layers? It is shaded in blue, I guess indicating the presence of water. What does the arrow in that layer imply? Why is there a relatively thin, darker blue layer?
• The next layer down in the sequence is shaded in grey and labeled “water impermeable layer”. So this layer is a steel plate?
• The bottom most layer is labeled “Ice-ageSpring – the perfectly protected mineral water from the ice-age”. This layer is indicated by a really nice variable shading in blue in white resembling a glacier. Does that mean there’s a glacier down there? Why is that layer perfectly protected? By the water-impermeable layer on top? Does it mean that layer is also impermeable for contaminants? The arrow on top, pointing vertically towards ground surface indicates input from “agriculture and industry” — where does that input go? “Just” into ground- and surface water?
• The boundaries of all the layers are parallel, and all except the bottom most layers have constant thickness everywhere.

All these questions in my mind, I thought I’d strive for clarification, and have a look at the webpage that the label indicates. This is what I found under the section “expert opinion“:

„EiszeitQuell weist nur alte, gereifte Grundwasserkomponenten auf. Das eiszeitliche Mineralwasservorkommen wird gegen Umwelteinflüsse in idealer Weise abgeschirmt. Die ausgewogene Zusammensetzung der Inhaltsstoffe und das Fehlen von anthropogen bedingten, vom Menschen verursachten Stoffen wie Nitrat oder Nitrit bewirken unter anderem seine in zahlreichen Untersuchungen nachgewiesene ursprüngliche Reinheit. Es ist natriumarm und für die Zubereitung von Säuglingsnahrung geeignet.“

If you don’t understand German, and even if you put this only into the google translating service, you will notice, that they talk about this water as if it was the main course in a five star restaurant!

What was the company thinking? Is there anything we could do?

For already quite a while doughnut-shaped water bottles are available in Finnish supermarkets. The idea is, to donate 10 cents of each sold bottle for the protection of the Baltic Sea. Is this sensible? The bottle is a disposable one. The water is tap water. It isn’t even sparkling water, because most people don’t like bubbles in water (as long as there isn’t also hop and malt).

In most bars and restaurant in Finland you get tap water for free. There are no additional costs for transport and packaging and you can be sure the water is potable. As long as you don’t live in Nokia, there is absolutely no reason to buy bottled water. Drinking tap water and investing some money in a proper waste water treatment at the summer cottage is probably far more sensible than doughnut-shaped bottles.

Anyway, the advertisement video is nice. Participants are Bam Margera, HIM and Jorma Uotinen, which is a famous Finnish dancer.

Personally, I’ve always thought bottled water is weird. First, I don’t like it carbonated (bubbly), second, it seems weird to buy something, that is coming straight out of the taps in your house, with equal or even better quality control than what you would buy in bottles, and you don’t have to carry it.

Especially, I always thought this image to be scary:

Ok, it’s sugary water, not “pure” water, but hey.

The NY Times recently reviewed a book that looks into the phenomenon of bottled water: “Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It” by Elizabeth Royte (at amazon.com or at VLB)

There is also a letter to the editor which provides some insights as to how drinking water is controlled in the US. And there is also a free chapter available to read online at the NYTimes.

Wow! Who would have thought that the truth about bottled water would ever become mainstream? It seems that more and more people in the US realize that it they are paying for something they can get for free while also producing huge amounts of waste and wasting huge amounts of energy. What’s the situation in Germany? Is anyone questioning the obsession with Volvic, Evian, or Sprudel? Also, is anyone considering the life cycle impact of reusable bottles (Mehrwegflaschen)? I think it is time for a discussion of environmentalism in Germany and the US on planetwater.org! -Patrick

read more | digg story

Those eight daily glasses of water you’re supposed to drink for good health? They will cost you $0.00135 — about 49 cents a year — if you take it from a New York City tap. Or, city officials suggest, you could spend 2,900 times as much, roughly $1,400 yearly, by drinking bottled water.

I do feel like saying: “Told you so!”

read more | digg story

This article by Nigel Cox summarizes everything that is wrong with bottled water. On the one hand it turns into a branded status symbol – what kind of a society accepts it to FedEx a case of a certain brand of bottled water across a continent? On the other hand more and more people lack access to drinking water.

And in Fiji, a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the U.S. market today, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have safe, reliable drinking water. Which means it is easier for the typical American in Beverly Hills or Baltimore to get a drink of safe, pure, refreshing Fiji water than it is for most people in Fiji.

At the Peninsula hotel in Beverly Hills, where the rooms start at $500 a night and the guest next door might well be an Oscar winner, the minibar in all 196 rooms contains six bottles of Fiji Water. Before Fiji Water displaced Evian, Diet Coke was the number-one-selling minibar item. Now, says Christian Boyens, the Peninsula’s elegant director of food and beverage, “the 1 liter of Fiji Water is number one. Diet Coke is number two. And the 500-milliliter bottle of Fiji is number three.”

Some people still discuss if global warming is happening. Other people reckognize that something in fact is happening (this sometimes results in headlines as “2007 seen as second warmest year as climate shifts“) and maybe discuss how to minimize detrimental effects. Some look at the soil and how it is farmed, and come to at least interesting conclusions. Still other people think how this could be advantageous. It could be quite advantageous for professionals trained in water!

And still other people blame the gay.

On the topic of climate change, the protocol from the recent G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, is an interesting read, especially paragraphs 40 to 61.

Chinese Water

This picture shows Xu Jiehua (r), the wife of the detained Chinese environmental activist Wu Yilong, sitting behind water samples collected by Wu Yilong from Chinese urban rivers and lakes. To me this looks more like popsicle-colors and not like drinking water… hopefully popsicle have different constituents though…

Celebrity Water

Some people, I think might fall into the category “celebrities”, seem to fall for anything… H2Om is the world’s first “interactive natural spring water” and is infused with the power of positive energy through words, music, colors, symbols, and you. It’s only $34.95 a case. Your choice of: Perfect Health, Love, Prosperity, Gratitude, Will Power, Joy, or Peace. See here, via here

Again Liquid Gummy Bears

On my recent trip to Albuquerque, I had to find out, that the vitaminwater I recently wrote about, in fact is ubiquitous in supermarkets in New Mexico. Who would have thought? And I’ve noticed a lot of people actually drinking it. My only explanation is “good” marketing…

Water Bottles and Waste

The German magazine Der Spiegel has a feature on the waste produced by consuming water from water bottles instead from the tap. The article references the worldwatch institute, but on their webpage I could find only this, which is probably related. The point of the story is that worldwide sales of bottled water have doubled within only years. All these bottles have significant impact on the world’s waste situation.

CNN reports on some “evidence” that some parts of society start to realize that bottled water is not the way to go.

There’s vitaminwater from a company called “Glaaceu”, and there is lifewater from “PepsiCo”. Supposedly both contain some new sweetener which is supposedly awesome. Who wants to drink stuff that looks like liquid gummy-bears anyways? Via slashfood

These guys make a water bottle that tells you when you’re thirsty. Oh wait… you know when you’re thirsty…