USA Water Filter Blog

The world now consumes 200 billion litres of bottled water every year. The majority of this is in plastic bottles. You can pretty much equate each litre into one bottle. So that makes 200 billion water bottles that we need to dispose of or recycle every year.

How did we get to drinking this much water out of bottles when we have perfectly good water out of the taps? Well you can blame the big soda drink manufacturers. Back in the 80′s they realised that we can only drink so much soda.

In order to keep growing they needed to create a new market. They decided to bottle water. They then went on a campaign to sell us, saying that bottled water is way better for us than water out of the tap. We fell for it and today it is a multi-billion dollar market. We now ship water from Fiji to Italy, Italy to USA and Paris to Australia!

So is it better for us or not? Well 40% of bottled water is actually filtered tap water. Some are known to be better, some worse. No matter what water brand you buy though, there is one key that should give us the answer.

http://www.sail-world.com/Australia/Plastic-Oceans-(Plastic-in-our-playground!)–Part-2—Plastic-bottles/97424

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Air and water, necessities of life are from the natural world, yet they have frequently become dumping grounds. I am reminded of a cartoon that appeared in a national daily paper several years ago. Two fishermen are fishing in a river from a small boat, while behind them is a fishing net filled to bursting point with rubbish that has been thrown or blown into the waterways.

We are dependent on pure water and air. There are ads for air filters attached to air conditioners and many buy pure bottled water or at least filter the already treated tap water. We need these to live.

We do have a future. Sustainable living is about the 5Rs – refusing, reusing, repairing, recycling and reducing. Sustainable living is about returning to Mother Nature – planting trees and gardens. Sustainable living is about using less. Sustainable living is about understanding that Mother Nature is a friend and that our developments must be compatible with her.

http://www.theborneopost.com/2012/05/20/moving-towards-sustainability/

 

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SARASOTA, Fla. – Starting this fall, New College students and faculty will no longer find bottles of water in the school’s cafeteria or vending machines.

On Wednesday, student body leaders voted to ban the sale of all bottled water beginning next school year. “It’s a movement that has been taking ground nationally at schools like Harvard, Yale and Brown,” said student body President, Michael Long.

Long says the hope is to get more students committed to sustainability.  “The major problem is that people are using bottled water when there are great alternatives elsewhere,” Long said. “The plastic is not being recycled. This is going in our landfills and is creating waste and pollution.”

Before classes begin next fall, each student will be given a reusable container, allowing them to fill it up with water from the school’s fountains, and newly installed water refill stations.

http://www.mysuncoast.com/news/local/story/New-College-to-ban-sales-of-bottled-water/HJPB4qCtfEKFWygi6KNjLg.cspx

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“Americans are drinking more bottled water because they find it convenient, appealing and also healthy,” says Gary Hemphill, who is managing director for information services at Beverage Marketing, and a longtime observer of bottled water and beverage sales in the U.S. and around the world.
The resurgence of bottled water–sales dropped in 2008 for the first time in 31 years, and again in 2009, tracking declines in overall drink sales because of the recession–may be surprising given the debate about its value as a product in the last five years.

The record sales year comes as more than a dozen colleges and universities have taken the extraordinary step of banning sale of bottled water on campus, often under pressure from student organizing campaigns that encourage students to drink tap water.

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679874/americans-guzzling-more-bottled-water-than-ever

 

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As G-8 leaders hold their lengthy discussions about the challenges facing the world, they can reach out to the glass in front of them for a refreshing sip of water. What a luxury! In most places in the world, a sip of water could cause diarrhea or other water-born illness. A bottle of clean water could cost the equivalent of a day’s wage.

Reading the latest research about water scarcity in the Middle East, where ANERA works, I was dismayed by statistics that reveal a harsh reality facing one of the world’s most arid regions. Experts predict the available water supply in 2050 will be half what it is today for a population that is growing by an average 3 percent a year. And yet, more than 70 percent of scarce water resources are used for agriculture.

The challenge of providing clean water is exacerbated by natural and man-made conditions on and under the ground: desertification, encroaching sea water, natural evaporation, wasteful management, pollution from agriculture run-off — to name a few. Nonprofit development and humanitarian organizations can do a lot but it takes political will on the part of governments around the globe to find and implement solutions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill/water-crisis_b_1514922.html

 

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SARASOTA – Starting this fall, New College students and faculty will no longer find bottles of water in the school’s cafeteria or vending machines.

On Wednesday, student body leaders voted to ban the sale of all bottled water beginning next school year. “It’s a movement that has been taking ground nationally at schools like Harvard, Yale and Brown,” said student body President, Michael Long.

Long says the hope is to get more students committed to sustainability.  “The major problem is that people are using bottled water when there are great alternatives elsewhere,” Long said. “The plastic is not being recycled. This is going in our landfills and is creating waste and pollution.”

http://www.mysuncoast.com/news/local/story/New-College-to-ban-sales-of-bottled-water/HJPB4qCtfEKFWygi6KNjLg.cspx

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Going green doesn’t need to be a burden, and saving the Earth doesn’t need to cost the earth. In fact, it can help you save hundreds of pounds a year – and help the environment. Here are four fantastic ways to help you save money, whilst helping the planet:

Save energy to save money

• To prevent high energy bills, turn your thermostat down a few notches when it’s cold. Simply wear another layer around the house.
• Install energy efficient light bulbs.
• Invest in solar PV panels. Solar PV panels convert light, not warmth, into electricity, so they work all year round. By attaching a solar panelor two to your house, you could save up to £200 per year. And just think how much money you could have saved on energy bills last month, given that we’ve just had the sunniest March since 1929!

Drive less

• Given that the UKhas the eighth highest price for petrol in Europeand the second highest for diesel, it obviously makes sense to drive less, where you can. Walk or cycle short distances to save money, and improve your health.
• For those who drive to work, consider car sharing. There are plenty of national websites that can help you find other workers in your local area driving to the same place. By sharing, you’ll not only save on petrol, but help to cut congestion and pollution.

Eat/drink smart

• There’s nothing wrong with eating meat, but if you do, try to add one meatless meal a week. Meat is expensive, and even more so when you consider the related environmental and health costs.
• Use a water filter to purify tap water instead of buying bottled water. Not only is bottled water expensive, but it also generates a huge amount of container waste.

http://www.bristol247.com/2012/05/17/going-green-how-to-save-the-planet-and-your-bank-balance-63907/

 

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Busselton retailers say there has been a rush to buy water filters since the city’s water was chlorinated.

Busselton was the only major city in Australia to drink chemical-free water but that changed last month when the Water Board began phasing in chlorine.

Local hardware store manager Collin Waterhouse says, since then, he has run out of filters several times as people rush to get one.

He says tradespeople have been struggling to keep up with demand.

“It’s a steamrolling effect if you can put it that way. Plumbers are obviously getting busier and busier, so the time span between the initial purchase of a whole-house system to when it’s actually been installed, can be a considerable length of time,” he said.

He says most people are opting for a simple way to extract chlorine from their water.

http://www.waterworld.com/index/display/news_display/1667854381.html

 

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There are so many items on the Earth’s to-do list that it’s overwhelming: water pollution, ground pollution, air pollution, energy waste, overfishing, climate change, garbage dumps, overpopulation. And those are just a tiny sliver. Makes you want to plug your ears and pretend you don’t know — too macro-environmental, you think, needs experts to sort it out.

So we’re going micro. What we, the regular Joes, can do today, on Earth Day 43.

The simplest is, don’t buy bottled water. Take an already-used plastic bottle, or better yet, a reusable metal water bottle, fill it up and bring it with you. Landfills absorb 140 million plastic water bottles every day. Only one-fifth are recycled. It takes a lot of oil to produce those bottles and a lot of gas to distribute them. Do without that new bottle of water for just one day.

Speaking of plastic, Americans generate 31 million tons of plastic waste every year. It’s 12 percent of the solid waste stream. We should stop buying so much of the stuff so we don’t throw so much out. So today, try not to buy any plastic, and reuse the plastic you would otherwise pitch in the trash.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/148419355_For_the_love_of_Earth.html

 

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About 1,000 miles north of Hawaii lies an aquatic area known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” which stretches hundreds of miles across the Pacific Ocean and is riddled with tiny shreds of plastic. A new paper from the Scripps Oceanic Institution highlights a striking fact about the area: The amount of debris found within has increased 100-fold in the past 40 years, and is upsetting the ocean’s delicate ecosystems in a number of surprising ways. Here, a brief guide to the Pacific Ocean’s growing plastic problem:

Why is there so much plastic there?
The high concentration of plastic debris is the result of an enormous rotating ocean current called the North Pacific Gyre. The vortex of ocean water and wind sweep the plastic bits up and usher them to stiller waters, trapping them in what’s infamously called the Garbage Patch.

What items does the plastic originate from?
Bottles, bags, and other discarded material. The plastic pieces that don’t sink to the bottom are often broken down by sunlight and waves, which “degrade and shred the material over time into pieces the size of a fingernail, or smaller,” says Jonathan Amos at BBC News. These tiny bits are causing the Garbage Patch to grow not in size, but in density, says Paul Rogers at Mercury News. Now, there are “roughly 100 times more pieces per cubic meter of water than there were in samples during the 1970s.”

http://theweek.com/article/index/227878/the-pacific-oceans-growing-plastic-problem

 

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