Archive for the ‘Water Filters’ Category

Australia Takes Lead in Banning Bottled Water

Monday, July 13th, 2009

A New York Times article reported that residents of Bundanoon, Australia voted to ban bottled water sales in their town to do their part in helping environmental concerns over landfills and save a little cash too. Only two people voted against the measure.

Bundanoon may very well be a small community of only 2500, but it wasn’t the first in Australia to restrict bottled water. Earlier the same day, the premier of New South Wales “banned all state departments and agencies from buying bottled water, calling it a waste of money and natural resources.” New South Wales is Australia’s most populous state.

Approximately 60 cities in the U.S. and some in Canada and the U.K. stopped spending tax dollars on bottled water during meetings and conferences, but Australia is the first to ban actual sales of bottled water products. Bundanoon was prompted to this latest move because a bottled water company out of Sydney wanted to set up operations in their small town. The idea of using Bundanoon’s water resources, trucking it out of town, and then reselling the finished product back to Bundanoon’s residents is nuts. They are still in a court battle over it and evidently won’t be having any of the finished product around at all now.

It’s curious that just 30 years ago no one had an interest is consuming so much water. You drank the stuff when you were thirsty. What I noticed happening back then were diet plans that required massive amounts of water to move fat out of the body, i.e. Atkins original diet. This may have jump-started the bottled water industry, along with concerns over polluted water in the 70’s that lead to the Clean Air and Water Acts. Although Perrier water was around, the first two massively produced brands worldwide that I recall were Aquafina—produced by Pepsi Cola, and Dasani—produced by Coca Cola. Coke and Pepsi admitted their bottled water is nothing more than tap water. So why are we paying for it? And I’d like to know, did the diet gurus, and the aerobics industry that took off about the same time have a big stake in the bottled water industry?

After writing blogs about bottled water, a pet peeve, I found that Pepsi and Coke didn’t want a bottle return policy for their respective water either because it would be too costly. What? They have a commodity that is could conceivably come out of hose into a bottle that we are routinely charged anywhere from $.79 to $1.25 for and they can’t afford a bottle return?

And although we’re still struggling with an overabundance of plastic containers, new products arrive in the market place on a regular basis that use even more plastic than necessary like the new Steamables line of foods where we just leave the food in the bag and steam them in the microwave, serve it up, and throw the plastic bag in the trash on a daily basis. The same goes for tossing a perfectly good zip loc bag after using it once. Our packaging needs to change, along with our attitude that “out of sight” means all is well.

Maybe if we were required to keep our garbage within sight, like in our own yards, we’d be way more ingenious at figuring out how to keep from producing a lot of it and in a big hurry to figure out how to get rid of it. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Read more: http://alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP466190.htm.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/27/news/companies/pepsi_coke/.

Posted in Australia, Bottled Water, Conservation, Environmentalism, Green Products, Pollution, Recycling, Water Filters | No Comments »

Plastics, Birth Defects, Baldness…

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

 

I read an article “More Problems With Plastics” in U.S. News and World Report, May 19, 2008, by Adam Voiland that will be very disturbing to males. It’s about chemicals called phthalates found in plastics. I’ve already reported and insinuated that we’re slowly poisoning ourselves with gender bending bisphenol A (BPA), another additive in plastics. Phthalates are endocrine disruptors, (interferes with hormones) like BPA, whose results are already seen in fish with both male and female reproductive organs, no organs, or a variety of mutations in between. BPA could soon affect birds and mammals, if it hasn’t already done so. Who knows? We’re lied to so much with scientific jargon relating to parts per million, trillion, and so goes the story of phthalates.

 

It takes me a long time to research scientific reports about industrial toxins because I have to look up every other word and then find out what the baseline is. Then I have to look at the industry that produces it and figure out how they are lying about it. It’s like every time I hear that water and air are so much cleaner than 30 years ago.  I want to scream. Thirty some years ago we were so awfully polluted, and I was here to see it, when beaches were closed not sporadically but regularly. Out of this pollution came the Clean Air and Water Acts where we began to clean up. So of course we’re cleaner than at our all time highest pollution levels. But how much cleaner? If we mean 2 parts per trillion less of any of a myriad of toxins in our air and water than in 1970, we can honestly make that claim, but it’s hardly ideal or healthy now is it?

 

So here we have an article that talks about birth defects from phthalates especially in male babies. One out of 300 baby boys, (scary numbers here) don’t have a urethra that emerges out of the tip of their penis. It ends up somewhere else underneath, midway down the shaft, or barely out of the scrotum. It’s called hypospadias and studies show that phthalates reproduce it in rodents. The article says, “Phthalates are used widely as softening agents in certain plastics,” PVC mostly, but also pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and all types of products. 

 

The article states that in 2005 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that “most Americans have traces of hormone-disrupting chemicals in their body.” Another advocacy group found “84 percent of American have at least six different phthalates in their urine.”  Scientists have been studying 3 of the most prevalent hormone disruptors that are also linked to “testicular cancer, reduced sperm quality, diminished penis size, and undescended testicles.” Told you it was a male nightmare.

 

Of course, and here is the lie, not everyone thinks the effects seen in animals justifies concern. Again, the excuse is that the doses the animals are given are higher than anything in humans. Risk to humans is minimal. Lives are weighed by parts per million/trillion. Nice, real nice. One in 300 babies has hypospadias, but nah, no big risk. That’s why many European countries have banned phthalates in certain toys. America is still in the consideration stage at this point; even though some companies stepped up to the plate and phthalate free products are showing up in stores. Now you know what that means.

 

I have to take the time here to point out one of my biggest complaints also. What’s the sense of experimenting on animals if someone ultimately uses the same tired excuse that it’s not the same for humans? It is why I am and have been adamantly against animal experimentation for a long time. It is an absolute myth that it is necessary. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, NEAVS, and many professionals have been testifying about it for years. We’re in the 21st century now. There are superior methods. But research animals are a big racket and cheap. Don’t ever lose your cat or dog.

 

If you’re male and already in your 20’s or 30’s breathing a sigh of relief, think again. Or rather look to your hairline. As a licensed cosmetologist that had my own shop for almost 8 years, I paid close attention to the most successful products for baldness. Baldness is relative to some of the many hormones our body produces. An overabundance of a certain type chokes out the hair follicles. My husband’s father and grandfather on his mother’s side were bald, as were all of his uncles on both sides of the family. My husband is 55 with a full head of hair. Hmmm. Eating freshly cooked meals every night, not drinking tap water for almost 30 years, imbibing minimal pop or junk food, and growing our own fruits and vegetables is starting to really show results. It’s not just a cliché that we are what we eat, drink, and breathe. Believe it!

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Posted in Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Conservation, Environmentalism, Health, Hormones in Food, Industry, Marine Life, Organic, Pollution, Protesting Pollution, Science, Water Filters | No Comments »

Great Lakes Compact Signed by Michigan Legislature But It’s Not a Done Deal Yet

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

 

Michigan’s House and Senate passed the Great Lakes Compact yesterday but it’s still not a done deal. Accompanying legislation about groundwater usage is still unsigned. It’s necessary before the Compact can head to the governor’s office for final approval. The House and Senate are wrangling over how much water can be taken from groundwater, streams, and inland lakes. The House wants to issue permits for users of more than 1 million gallons a day, and the Senate wants the ceiling at 2 million gallons a day. Of course the Senate leans toward business concerns and the House leans toward environmental concerns. Isn’t the whole idea of the compact to conserve our water by keeping it here? And our Senate still insists on excessive use of it?

I say we do away with bottled water all together for a big savings both in water and oil. According to  Environmental Graffiti’s website:

Three gallons of the wet stuff is required to produce one gallon of what you will happily pay a dollar for, largely because of the length and complexity of the various “purification” processes and the evaporation loss that takes place while the water is in the plant. This is quite an ugly statistic, when juxtaposed to the fact that less than one percent of the water on our planet is both accessible and potable.

Besides the extravagant amount of oil used to make the bottles and large volumes of water used in the bottling process, there are of course, several other considerations. Firstly, there are the transport costs – by the time you transport every bottle by rail or truck and keep it cool, you may as well have filled it one-fourth of the way with oil. Let’s also not forget the operating costs of the factories themselves and the profit the bottled water companies have to make for their shareholders. Therefore, purely from an economic standpoint, if you only drink bottled water, you’re a mug.

Beyond that, there is also an environmental impact from production. This in fact, is quite simple to calculate: every ton of PET plastic for the bottles produces 3 tons of carbon–adding 2.5 Million tons of carbon dioxide emissions to the 17 million barrels of oil.

We need to move ahead with this bill and only allow minimal water withdrawal, since we can see by the above the excessive use of water can be eliminated. Get a Pur or Brita water filter for your tap for Pete’s sake! Besides we now know plastic can leach bisphenol A, a hormone disruptor. We don’t want that now do we?

Because Michigan is surrounded by the Great Lakes, being one of the last two states to sign makes us look, well, not very environmentally green. And we are one of the last two because Wisconsin not only passed the Compact today, but it’s headed to Governor Doyle’s office for signature. We should have had this hammered out long ago.

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/05/michigan_legislature_approves.html

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/green-living/what-is-cost-of-bottled-water/1129

http://www.biztimes.com/daily/2008/5/15/

 

 

Posted in Bottled Water, Conservation, Environmentalism, Great Lakes, Great Lakes Water, Green Products, Michigan/Great Lakes, Pollution, Water Filters, Water Shortage | No Comments »

Oprah’s Green Show Had a Lot of Green Tips

Friday, January 4th, 2008

Watched Oprah’s “Green” show tonight, and learned some things I’ll pass along here.  I know it’s a rerun, but hey, I missed it the first time around.  She handed out reusable cloth grocery bags first, reminding everyone that it takes 1000 years for plastic to break down. I know what most of the ladies in the audience were thinking. How are we supposed to get a huge shopping basket of goods into that little bag? It’s only good for small trips. My answer is to look for grocery stores that recycle those bags in bins in the bottle return area. I don’t throw mine out. I swear I can cram 50 plastic bags into one. I’ve got a trunk full for drop off now. Also look for paper recycling drop offs near your home. I reuse big plastic shopping bags to collect and cart my junk mail and any paper for recycling.

Recycle your clothes, your sports equipment, fitness equipment, appliances, yard gear, aluminum foil, and glass, just about everything. Have yard sales and meet your neighbors. My neighborhood has them all the time. Here are some interesting statistics that were on the show relative to recycling and conservation:

We use 10 billion paper bags per year that takes 14 million trees to produce.
We use 380 billion plastic bags. Try bringing your own, and then recycle.
Junk mail uses 100 million trees and 20 billion gals. of water a year.
We ask for 8 billion ATM receipts a year. It is equal to a roll of paper 2 billion ft. long that would wrap around the equator 15 times.
Using 1 less 2-ply napkin a day will save one billion tons of paper waste per year.
It takes 5 liters of water to make the plastic bottle for just one liter of water. Use re-useable bottles and for Pete’s sake get a water tap filter! New Wave Enviro products have personal reusable plastic bottles with built in filters.
Oh and our little obsession with bottled water costs big money, enough to provide the entire world with clean drinking water.

Some brand names that provide really good green products are 7th Generation, Meyers, Method reusable micro-fiber clothes. And Shaklee has been producing all natural cleaning products for years. People rave about a product called H2. Two drops of the natural cleaner in a container of water will clean everything in your house, and it works.

Americanforest.org is a website where you can buy a tree for $1 each and they will plant it. It’s the least we can do considering. And for absolutely stunning cinematography, do not miss “Planet Earth” on the Discovery Channel. I’ve seen some of it. We were given the care of such a beautiful, majestic planet, and pretty much pigged it up. The DVD and book are also available in stores. This DVD could be thought of as an heirloom for future generations to witness. For those of you out there who have pooh, poohed the poor polar bear this is heart-wrenching stuff. A woman said it changed her life when she watched a polar bear swim, and swim, and swim in what is now open water to the point of exhaustion. He finally found land where he dug the hole that would be his grave. He curled up and died.

For more statistics and tips look for The Green Book a Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen.

A lot of the info came from Sundance at http://www.sundancechannel.com/thegreen.

Posted in Alternative Energy, Alternative Energy Sources, CFL lights, Conservation, Energy, Energy Costs, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Green Products, Green Retailers, Landfills, Logging, Methods for Lowering Energy Costs, Sundance, Water Filters | 2 Comments »

Website Says Price Versus Production Cost, Bottled Water Puts Big Oil to Shame

Monday, July 30th, 2007


  
I wrote a blog way back when about trying to save our health while ruining the environment with the endless stream of God awful, empty plastic bottles from water. And now Aquafina made it official, although it’s right there on the bottle, that it’s just filtered tap water. Ditto for Dasani.


Filtered tap water is what I drink everyday from that neat little gizmo called a Brita and/or Pur filter that is attached to the end of my tap. And I’ve been waaaaaay ahead of everyone on that front. I haven’t drunk tap water since 1979. Let’s see—28 years. I gave up drinking tap water after ruining a large, heavy, thick walled pot that I utilized to humidify my apartment in the winter. The crust that built up on the surface of that pot couldn’t be knocked off with a sledgehammer. I suppose it was some sort of calcium deposit, but nonetheless, I decided it could build up in my body the same way. So I stopped drinking tap water. Besides, you know they’ve never really done any analysis of the long-term use of fluoride that’s put in the water to keep our teeth safe.


I started buying gallon jugs of distilled water. I would take the empty jugs to those good old recycling semi’s we used to have when we gave a hoot. You know. There would be one for paper, one for glass, and one for plastic. They are no more, which is sad. I would use them. I use the Alitibi paper drop-offs all the time. Just because our community doesn’t care about recycling doesn’t mean I don’t care. If the recycling semis showed up again, I would most definitely use them, trucking all the separated stuff down to them once a week.


Anyway, when the 2-½ gallon jugs of distilled water showed up on shelves, I started buying them. They have a tap so one would sit on my counter for drinking water. This is back when people thought my husband and I, (he saw my ruined pot and that hardened crust so he joined me in not drinking tap water), were nuts when we would announce we’re out of water. I can be blindfolded and pick out distilled from mineral from tap water. But, I never went for the fancy water at the time like Evian, or Perrier, just too many bottles, and more on that farther down.  Distilled is distilled. Everything is out of it. There is absolutely no taste and it’s extremely soft water, that’s how to tell it’s the real thing. Start adding minerals and I can’t tell what it is, and I become doubtful with visions of bottled water being filled out back with a hose. So for years I stuck with distilled. Then came Brita and Pur. What plastic jug savers they were, halleluiah! But then the Aquafina started, and Dasani, and Absopure got in the picture (sorry the big jugs of Absopure bring back the old vision of the hose out back).


All it took was a few water contaminate scares in some major cities, and the bottled water craze was off and running. I could never figure why someone would want to deal with all those plastic bottles anyway? This is before environmentalism mind you. Now we know for sure we’re not helping the environment or ourselves since a lot of the bottled water we drink is simply purified tap water, the same as I drink with absolutely no plastic added. Consumers trying to save themselves from bad water while ruining the environment are a stupid paradox. Lose the environment and we’re goners anyway, no matter what water we drink, duh.


As for the fancy ones like Evian and Perrier that tout they are from springs, well they are.

But one has to ask, where exactly are those springs? Evian is actually mineral water and comes from the Cachat Spring located on the Southern shore of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Unfortunately, I found some bad reports of the water content in Lake Geneva. Core samples were taken for Pb or lead. There is runoff into the lake from a plant in Lausanne and deposits of Pb from industrial (and domestic) activities predominates there. The maximum contamination of lead occurred in the lake in the late 1970s, and has declined to the present. I’m glad I didn’t choose the Evian route back then.
 
And well, Perrier, suffered a real blow when a study in the states found benzene in the Perrier water. Perrier said it was an isolated incident when a worker goofed on the filtering procedure, and that the spring itself was uncontaminated. If so, why the filtering procedure? I never figured that out. They recalled 160 million bottles of the stuff.
 
It just goes to show, we’re gullible, very gullible and need to stop that. Our country is in a mess because we are gullible. We still haven’t moved forward, environmentally that is, because we are still being gullible to the same guys that we were gullible about that have this country in a mess. Is that double gullible? I thought for sure America had street smarts, if any smarts, although the academic type of smarts is rapidly declining also. If we did have some smarts, we would not be spending approximately 5 cents per ounce or $365 per year to drink just one 20 oz. bottle of filtered water each day and clogging up the earth with plastic that does not break down.  According to LighterFootstep.com: http://lighterfootstep.com/5-reasons-not-to-drink-bottled-water.html, bottled water is a bigger rip off than gasoline at just over 2 cents per ounce. Now that’s a real kick in the pants. If we’re going to continue to be this naive, maybe I should start a bottled water company and hook a hose up to the filter on my tap. I could spell naive backward for a name, but then again Evian has already done that.
 


 
 
 
 
 

Posted in Conservation, Environmentalism, Green Products, Landfills, Pollution, Recycling, Water Filters | No Comments »

Stocking Stuffers, Save Money, Save the Earth

Friday, December 22nd, 2006

Last minute shopping for Christmas? If you have someone concerned about the environment or their energy bills, or bills in general here are some stocking stuffers to give:


 

  • Five CFL light bulbs, (the twisted looking kind), and offer to change them out from regular bulbs.


 

  •  
    • If every household in America switched just 5 light bulbs to CFL’s it would be the same as taking 100,000 CO2 emitting cars off the road for a year!


 

  • A Pur or Brita water filter for the tap and offer to install it.


 

  •  
    • Think of sparing the trash dump all those plastic water bottles.


 

  • A set of solar lights for outside and offer to change them out.


 

  • A programmable thermostat and offer to install it.


 

  •  
    • Dialing down just 2 degrees will spare us 9% of overall CO2 emissions.


 

  • A gift card to Lowe’s or a hardware store.


 

  •  
    • Urge the recipient to use the card to purchase new furnace filters.


 

  •  
    • A hot water blanket can spare our air 4-½ % of overall CO2 emissions.


 

  • Finally, only buy Energy Star appliances if you’re in the market.


These stocking stuffers not only save the environment extra abuse, they also save the homeowner money. The solar outdoor lights operate for free. CFL bulbs will lower your electric bill.  They come in 3-way. I even bought a CFL outdoor floodlight to shine on my wreath for the holidays.


The money we spend on bottled water is ridiculous and a waste. I’m talking experience here. I quit drinking tap water over 25 years ago, so I’m ahead of everyone with this clean water thing. I’ve never purchased 8 packs ever. I would buy 2 ½ gallon containers of water with their own spigot. Those jugs were much easier to take to a recycling center. When Pur and Brita came out with a tap filter, I ran to buy one. I’ve used them ever since. The obsession with bottled water is an ironic act. We’re afraid our tap water isn’t safe to drink because of pollution, so we buy non-recyclable bottled water and pollute the ground with plastic instead.


Dialing down the thermostat is a no brainer for savings as are furnace filters. The hot water blanket acts like a cozy cover. It takes less energy to keep that water hot. And if the power goes out, the water stays hot much longer.


Notice I didn’t suggest we simply buy the products but also offer to install them. Many of us know older people or someone who can’t change their light bulbs can’t install a tap filter, or a programmable thermostat. Giving someone a gift is not always a good measure of love or kindness. Buying is easy. We’re a nation of shoppers. Investing time and patience to do something for someone is a better measure of our true feelings. Time is something we never have enough of. To share it is a real act of giving.

Posted in Alternative Energy Sources, CFL lights, Climate, Conservation, Earth, Energy Costs, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Green Products, Green Retailers, Holidays, Methods for Lowering Energy Costs, Michigan Environmental News, Monroe Environmental News, Solar Energy, Water Filters | 4 Comments »