Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Hooray for the bottled water backlash!

The L.A. Times follows up today on the bottled water backlash, after a popular N.Y. Times article a few days ago. The L.A. Times article focuses on the marketing efforts by companies like Brita and Nalgene to cash in on the backlash, and why not? I've always thought it was crazy to spend so much money on little plastic bottles of water -- I can't believe it when I see tiny ladies at Trader Joe's carting huge cases of water out to their cars. I have a high quality reverse osmosis filter at my kitchen sink (eons better than a Brita pitcher), which can provide up to a few gallons a day of great-tasting water. It's a hard call for restaurants, since bottled water is a big contributor to profits, but I applaud the restaurants that are serving filtered water instead. Even though I'm not all that concerned about plastic bottle toxicity, I'm thinking of getting one of these snazzy Sigg bottles at Whole Foods for my desk at work, since plastic bottles sometimes pick up a funny taste after a while.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You should check out this website, it speaks about how much water is discarded in reverse osmosis, 2-4 gallons per every gallon of treated water.

http://www.wqa.org/sitelogic.cfm?ID=872

Pat Saperstein said...

That's certainly a valid point, but as I only use about a gallon a day of filtered water at the most, it doesn't really concern me that much. Surely the environmental cost of bottling and trucking all that bottled water is far higher than someone using a bit more tap water. Perhaps large-scale users like restaurants would have to factor in the wasted water, however.

Unknown said...

My "anti-bottled-water" rant includes pointing out the fantastic product delivery system that is required _by law_ to be installed at every house in every city in the US... Water pipes! If only we could get other necessities delivered as cheaply, easily and quickly as water! (Well, there's electricity and natural gas, I 'spose.)

I've been using a filter jug for years and find it works great.

Reverse osmoses sucks! (Well, to be more accurate, I 'spose it "blows".)

Anonymous said...

hi pat
glad that you are back.
would you mind telling me the name of water system is that you bought for your home/
thanks petra

Anonymous said...

Don't forget that apartment-dwellers may not have the freedom to install any sort of water filtration system to their rented sinks. Mine, for instance, would require drilling a hole - a no-no.

Yes, the Brita pitcher isn't the greatest for taste, but for other reasons it's definitely better than buying caseloads of bottled.

What I'd like to see? The city get its act together and ensure that the stuff that comes out of the tap is actually drinkable as-is. Other cities have drinkable tap water, we have heavily chlorinated sludge.

Anonymous said...

Check the double filter system out.

http://residential.everpure.com/singleproduct.aspx?p=6