Defend the indefensible: Buying bottled water

If you're buying fast food, it's better for you than juice or soft drink

if you're out (in the city e.g., or sightseeing or something), sometimes it just isnt feasible to find a tap. drinking in a toilet sink is gross. plus it is good to have a drink that isn't bad for you and is cool, and you can take it places while you drink it.

that's all i got

I can't defend it, and wont buy it unless theres some reason of extreme need (I desperately need water and there is no other source). I drink tap water. I keep a bottle and I refil it.

The stuff about the Fiji water makes me furious, knowing how poor a country Fiji is.

I like Fast Company, but haven't bought it in a while. Good article! Thanks.

I personally have a water bottle at my desk at work that I bought upstairs at the overpriced cafe next to the gym. I think it was full of Ice Mountain brand water when I bought it, but I have refilled it countless times from the tap or the water cooler (I know... that's still bottled water). It holds 20 fluid ounces (about 600ml), and I go through six or seven bottles a day. I like the bottle, it has a little flip top. Every 6-8 weeks, I'll trash it and go buy another bottle, and keep filling in the same way. I don't feel too bad. I really am buying just the bottle.

what about starbucks' ethos water, which claims to put some profits back into getting clean water to people who need it, even if it doesn't address the environmental costs.

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."

Heh. Attention Diet Coke addicts: you're also kinda douchey.

I remember when I was a kid I got together with a friend and filled up milk cartons full of water and tried selling it door to door. One lady was nice enough to give us a break, take us seriously and buy it. Later after some adult or other explained the pointlessness of this to me, and I felt silly. Man, how times change...

I can't defend it either, on two main grounds: 1)That's really wasteful to have all that plastic in landfills and 2) I bet the chemicals in the plastic end up seeping into the water and cause you harm. From what I have read, these chemicals mimic estrogen in your body and end up in the food chain. I'm way too tired right now to go into it any further, though. See you guys later.

I like the last lines of the article a lot:

Once you understand the resources mustered to deliver the bottle of water, it's reasonable to ask as you reach for the next bottle, not just "Does the value to me equal the 99 cents I'm about to spend?" but "Does the value equal the impact I'm about to leave behind?"

Simply asking the question takes the carelessness out of the transaction. And once you understand where the water comes from, and how it got here, it's hard to look at that bottle in the same way again.

In other words, river wolf OTM on that thread where he was being... what was it?... prickly?... about taking responsibility for eating meat.

It was a good laugh being in New York City at the height of the Vitamin Water craze!

Its also hilarious that the 2 top selling waters in the US arent even mineral water! Theyre freaking tap water!

Kenan I do what you do: I buy a 1.5L bottle for the bottle, and refil it from our filtered tap at work. At home, I just drink from the tap.

This has been a contentious issus here, because we've suffered from drought for a long time now and Melbourne is currently on pretty strict water restrictions (and will be on worse ones this summer I imagine).

Despite this, CocaCola Amatil got permission from a local council just out of melbourne to tap into their water supply - the only one the locals have as their wwater supply - to bottle and resell it back to everyone.

And they pay something obscene like 5 cents a lake's worth. Its obscene.

SO obscene I had to say so twice. I'm having a bad day.

Tap water in Basel tastes bad and may be dangerous (according to Greenpeace). There are no suck excuses elsewhere in Switzerland, though.

A chilled plastic bottle of water in the convenience-store cooler is the perfect symbol of this moment in American commerce and culture. It acknowledges our demand for instant gratification, our vanity, our token concern for health.

also, thirst. seriously though, "instant gratification", what the fuck.

did you miss the part where water is readily available and perfectly sanitary everywhere? Did you read the article?

in today's culture even eating is so crass compared to noble African hunger

in my local coffee shop -- in fact, in EVERY urban local coffee shop, and likely a lot of other places -- there's a big bucket of water, local tap water, full of local ice, with cups next to it. Drink all you want, it's water. Within a few feet there's also a big cooler that holds fruit juice, energy drinks, iced coffee, and bottled water. This article is saying that water, just plain water -- safe, clean, and plentiful, like they always said about nuclear energy -- is being ignored because people are buying the same product, only packaged and marketed. AND THAT'S WEIRD.

actually, the article doesn't even get into how it's weird, it's focused on how it's ridiculously wasteful.

That is weird, and wasteful. I would always take the free water where it was available.

A group of us were in a restaurant in Amsterdam the other night and one of us asked for tap water to drink. He was told that the restauarant only sold bottled water. I wonder if this is legal in a food establishment. Shouldn't it be the law that you have to give people free water if they ask for it? I know this was an issue years ago when nightclubs were losing money on the bar because kids were taking ecstasy and just filling water bottles in the toilet sinks, so some nightclubs stopped the water in the sinks in order to sell more bottled water. I seem to remember an action being successfully taken against them because of this.

Accentmonkey:

In fact, says Ingrid Gubbay, campaigns lawyer at consumer group Which?, restaurants do not legally have to provide free tap water. Only licensed clubs do, a hangover from the old highways and inn laws that said tap water had to be given out for free to thirsty travellers. In a restaurant however when you order a meal you're agreeing to pay for the food and drink and service and this is a contract for work and materials to which the Supply of Goods and Services Act applies. "While a restaurant can't force you to buy mineral water, it can legitimately charge you for providing tap water as mean as it might sound. The provision of any water includes an element of service, such as pouring water into a jug and cleaning it after you," says Gubbay.

That's from here: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ellie_levenson/2006/11/water_water_everywhere.html

in england they have to give you tapwater in a restaurant.

but to give an idea of when i buy bottled water: i travel from my home by train to another city, and among the places where there isn't free drinking water are: the train, the centre of london, and the train again. so during the 12 hours or however long i'm there, i will drink tap water from a bottle which at one point had mineral water in it. i replace the bottle every few weeks i guess.

i don't know anyone who buys a bottle of mineral water, tosses it, and just buys another. everyone refills. perhaps rich folk do this, i don't know.

oh xpost. that's interesting. i have never been refused tapwater in a restaurant.

nightclubs were losing money on the bar because kids were taking ecstasy and just filling water bottles in the toilet sinks, so some nightclubs stopped the water in the sinks in order to sell more bottled water

Fantastic! Who doesn't like dehydrated kids? Or better yet, dead ones?!

That makes me feel better, it's not just us. People are assholes all over. :(

I know. I heard that in some clubs they even boxed in the toilet cisterns, but I suspect that this had more to do with people leaving DROGZ in them than drinking out of them.

i don't know anyone who buys a bottle of mineral water, tosses it, and just buys another. everyone refills. perhaps rich folk do this, i don't know.

My cousin lives in an apartment close to a Lidl supermarket and a kids' playground and says that during the summer the teenagers would go into Lidl, buy bottles of mineral water, have water fights with the water, and then throw the bottles in the river. She did shout at them for doing it, but they just looked at her like she was a bit touched.

NickB, thanks for info.

Plastic bottles in rivers are ubiquitous in Sydney. Plastic wastage issues aside, I do wonder if the end result of all this tap water marketing involves some kind of master plan to privatise water supply in general and, in the end, make water really expensive instead of almost free. Perhaps that's a little paranoid, I don't know.

The water supply is privatised in the UK at least. If the water companies could demonstrate to the government regulator that water prices had to go up to meet increasing production costs (e.g. due to severe water shortages), then there's no reason why tap water couldn't become a much more expensive commodity. They would of course also have to defend high leak rates and record profits and the like first though.

the russian drinks bottled water and throws the bottles away. it is part of her princess-and-pea thing and drives me nuts. totally fucking indefensible. not to mention GULLIBLE.

"more money than sense" as we say in the 1950s.

does the water you use to wash dishes and yourself and so on have to be as clean as the water you use to drink?

The water you use to wash dishes should be. The water you wash yourself with, not necessarily, as long as you don't get any of it in your mouth or eyes.

no. most places in the uk water-you-use-to-wash-yourself is not as clean as drinking water.

crosspost

idea that bottled water is somehow going to be cleaner than tapwater is blind faith anyway right.

we're flushing our toilets w/ drinking water

you personally or generally in the uk? i'm not sure that's true of everyone. someone explained to me the difference once... errrrrr though thinking about it maybe the difference was 'imposed' on the water (ie mains water vs drinking water) after it had entered the house, which sort of makes my point moot...

I really just don't like water, regardless of bottle. I have to force myself to drink it everyday.

xpost yeah, kitchen/drinking tap water comes from the running main, bathroom water usually comes from a water tank which is supplied by the running main - so same water initially - but might be full of limescale, pondscum, dead pigeons, ebola.

oh well.

they don't have a special drinking pipe and a normal pipe just the main. unless you have something special rigged up all the water in taps, showers and toilets is the same and treated the same

crosspost

should be flushing w/ rain water or water from your dishes or bath or washing machine or whatever

yes. but when they designed the water supply system, they probably didn't envisage that need.

mind you the water from dishes can be pretty fucked up.

As the cost of supplying drinking water goes up, and we all start getting metered, I'm sure that 'grey water' recycling systems will become a lot more common.

didn't envisage what would eventually be seen as wasteful

changing the water that flushes toilets doesn't have to do w/ the water supply system just means stopping used water from leaving the house immediately and reusing it

crosspost

I think that they can now fit filters too, just so that you don't get random carrot chunks popping up in yr karzy.

the russian drinks bottled water and throws the bottles away. it is part of her princess-and-pea thing and drives me nuts. totally fucking indefensible. not to mention GULLIBLE.

-- emsk, Thursday, 27 September 2007 10:09

i don't know why i'm allowing this to surprise me, but...well.

changing the water that flushes toilets doesn't have to do w/ the water supply system just means stopping used water from leaving the house immediately and reusing it

it does have to do with the water supply system as a whole: the set-up we have wasn't the free choice of each householder to organize things as they chose with the water that was distributed to them. matter of volume building and so on. and changing it meaningfully would also be a volume thing. leaving it to individuals won't do much.

conserving water by not leaking a shitload of it seems to me a more pressing priority?

I heard it was a propane tank and the truck comes twice a month to refill it with water filtered from the tears of Trappist monks who eat nothing but mountain breezes.

http://www.angio.net/~lukesos/Pictures/Rainier2000/Hector_fuel_bottles.jpg

edward siggerhands

Can you get those Sigg bottles basically anywhere or just online?

You can also ring up Sigue Sigue Sputnik and ask them to bring you one

which actually brings up a really good point, I will not buy any $20 metal thermos until I can have one with the cover of Flaunt It on the side

defend the indefensible: designer waterbottles wtf

http://www.jeffbots.com/sigueX2sputnik.jpg

seriously why was this not my lunchbox as a kid? why did I have to settle for fucking garfield? no wonder I hate myself

I just bought one. All of you STFU.

http://www.bottleyourbrand.com/private-label-bottled-water.asp

nebbish, that's a sigg drinking bottle not a sigg/msr fuel bottle.

nebbish, huh. I should use a sierra club cup at work. https://secure2.convio.net/sierra/site/Ecommerce/8681711?VIEW_PRODUCT=true&product_id=1401&store_id=1621

Only the best for you http://www.msrcorp.com/cookware/titan_cup.asp

http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/966751/2/istockphoto_966751_hands_cupped_with_clipping_path.jpg

hey what up you picky douchebags

tap water in southern california is very "hard", ie its filled with salts of minerals like calcium and magnesium. it's fine for doing dishes and cooking but it makes tea and coffee taste really nasty and it's not very nice to drink. so please don't be tut-tutting over the popularity of bottled water in hollywood please take that into account.

OTOH i can't really afford $2 per day on bottled water so i buy distilled water for 35 cents a gallon (refilled at the grocery store) and then fill a nalgene every day.

the clear nalgenes *might* have some nasty chemicals in them, although nobody has really convincingly shown how the nasty stuff (bisphenol A) might get into the water, short of exposing it to heat or sunlight for a long time. if you want to be really safe just get a "cloudy" nalgene bottle instead of a colored clear bottle because those don't leach any chemicals into the water.

i might get a SIGG just because the stainless steel will be easier to keep clean and odor free - the nalgene gets sorta smelly after a few months, especially if i leave water in there for more than 24 hours. i have to wash it with soap about once a week to keep it nice, while the stainless stuff you just need to rinse w/ hot water regularly.

Can you get those Sigg bottles basically anywhere or just online?

I got mine a while ago on ebay but you can order online and I noticed that Whole Foods is selling them now.

defend the indefensible: designer waterbottles wtf

I'll defend them - they're worth every penny. They're pretty much indestructable, keep things really cold, do not leak, and will last for a very long time.

hey what up you picky douchebags

I wish I could change my username!

Phthalate talk is making me worry more about the time I bought bottled water and every glassful had solid white powdery residue at the bottom.

I started drinking a lot of bottled water when I cut out Coke etc; I've been trying to switch to tap water, but it would be a whole lot easier if the tap water here wasn't kind of greyish with visible particles floating and didn't need the tap run for two minutes before pouring and then drinking immediately to stop it tasting nasty. Not sure if this is the local water supply or the pipes in this house.

Yes, I do know I am a bad person.

tap water in southern california is very "hard", ie its filled with salts of minerals like calcium and magnesium. it's fine for doing dishes and cooking but it makes tea and coffee taste really nasty and it's not very nice to drink. so please don't be tut-tutting over the popularity of bottled water in hollywood please take that into account.

-- moonship journey to baja

Really? We were drinking straight and with tea in Jan and it tasted just fine. Perhaps Sydney water is worse.

Maybe you shouldn't live in a fucking desert.

[ / sandy douche ]

(actually I have no idea if hard water has anything to do with that, in fact it probably doesn't)

The tap water here tastes REALLY GOOD but there's tons of old gas stations that have been converted into "get yr reverse osmosis water here for 35 cents a gallon" here OR venmachines that fill up yr reverse osmosis water. I never got the point of it, and the article points out it does take up a lot of energy. Esp. my mum-in-law who'd drive 15 minutes every day to her "favorite one," insisting on giving even her dog the reverse osmosis water.

Water, poorer-tasting tap water, tastes way better if left in the fridge overnight. Maybe it's just because it's ++cold but it is yum.

I will only be buying a cute metal bottle when I have some expectation that I won't lose any coffee mug or water bottle I carry around with me within two weeks. I.e. never.

Our water does have floaty bits in it but that's just what makes the water hard (minerals)...the water in Las Cruces comes from an aquifer and then our recycled water goes to El Paso citizens! Haha.

lol a point about reusing water bottles and refrigerating them - as the water cools the particulates settle to the bottom of the container, which is one reason for poorer-tasting tap water, tastes way better if left in the fridge overnight

until you get to the bottom of the bottle and then URP weird flavors come right back atcha. this is especially true if you keep refilling and refrigerating like I was doing for a while with 4 different bottles on rotation. yikes @ trace metals iced tea

DREGS

Hello doesnt anyone buy Brita filter jugs or anything?

Brita makes a pretty cheap faucet attachment now that lasts like 6 months - it is disposable, but you're just throwing away one fairly small thing every 6 months or so, which is probably not even as much garbage as the filters from the jugs create.

Even better. I mean I'm not understanding the "our tap water is shit" argument when filters are readily available.

...esp since lots of bottle water (Aquifina, for example) actually is just filtered tap water.

Before I moved to California, I would never drink tap water. It just tasted terrible. But the tap water in San Francisco is SO GOOD, I don't have to use a filter or reverse osmosis or anything. Last month, I took a trip up to see where our water comes from (among other things). Although the Hetch Hetchy reservoir is in the middle of a beautiful wilderness, I still think that the folks who want to demolish the O'Shaughnessy Dam are crazy wackos.

Speaking from personal experience, San Diego tap water makes you go through Brita filters at twice the prescribed rate (attributable to its hardness). Calcium deposits form a visible crust on your faucet and stuff. So yeah, as Hurting2 recommended, I got out of the fucking desert.

yeah brita doesn't do shit to l.a. water tastewise, we tried it for a few months and it was still like drinking out of a pool. i'll try double filtering.

I was recently in Portugal on vacation and there were no water fountains anywhere. I ended up generally filling my water bottles in public washrooms sinks whenever I came across one. Pretty much every other tourist I saw was walking around with a disposable plastic water bottle. The whole thing seemed so wasteful. The tap water was very drinkable everywhere I went so I just don't understand why there aren't water fountains all over the place as seems to be common in most of North America.

This drives me insane too (bottled water, not particularly the lack of specified water fountains, but sure). In Argentina recently we got two big bottles of water when we got there and filled them from sinks for the rest of the trip.

I think it was euler that alerted me to this, but Paris has public water fountains everywhere and a lot of SPARKLING WATER fountains. It is the absolute best thing ever. Oddly enough it has become our favorite thing to do in Paris, going to the sparkling water fountains and filling up our bottles.

Yes! Local people know about them (you see people with big bags of empty bottles coming for refills) but they're not yet part of the tourist agenda here, the way they seem to be in Rome.

My mother-in-law and her partner constantly brag about how sustainable their lifestyle is. They refuse to drink tap water and fly twenty times a year to faraway places then copiously bitch about how their 2-3 months of vacation aren't enough.

I have always been surprised how there are rarely/few people around filling up water. I think we have been to 6 different locations now.

The one by the BNF, which has multiple spigots for both fizzy & tap water, is pretty well used ime. The one by me, by contrast, is mostly used by migrants as a urinal. "the other paris"...

I've been to the one by the BNF and maybe one person used it while we were there. This time around we went to the one on Canal Saint-Martin and one in a park near metro Stalingrad.

the one near Stalingrad is probably the one by me? where the park is full of laundry hung on makeshift lines? well, you have to go past the fountain further into the park to see all that. I have taken water from it too; people piss in the place where the overspill collects, not on the faucet.

I think? It's below Stalingrad near Louis Blanc, the neughborhood was def. more immigranty. I didn't know you lived near there. We should've had drinks (although I think you may have been in Bretagne).

the park very near me is the Jardin d'Éole, north of Stalingrad. near Louis Blanc is quite a bit nicer, I didn't know there were fountains there, but I'll look (about a 5 minute walk for me to LB). Hit me up when you're here, I'd be happy to have a drink.

Ok, I just looked at the water map and it was the one in Jardin d'Éole. For some reason I thought it was below the metro line.

This drives me insane too (bottled water, not particularly the lack of specified water fountains, but sure)

The thing about water fountains is that it encourages people to refill their bottles. I got occasional weird looks when filling my water bottle in a public washroom so I would guess pretty much nobody except me did this.

I was working this conservation conference once and we had removed all the bottled water (there were water refill stations) and all the single serve items from the food places. It was hilarious how many people asked us where they could buy bottled water, being upset that there wasn't any and then looking chagrined after we explained why.

Sparkling water fountains !!!

Why is this not regularly listed as a benefit of carbon capture.