USA Water Filter Blog

I was struck the other day by a comparison made on 5 Gyres, the blog site of scientists and activists who are working to draw attention to the growing concentration of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.

According to the scientists’ and activists’ estimate, the amount of oil used to produce plastic every day is the same amount as the oil that is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico every day from the damaged Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

And they point out that the plastic ends up in the same place – the ocean. So that means that we are the spill, or a spill of similar proportion to the uncontainable, disastrous spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Last year my touring production company decided to eliminate plastic water bottles from the list of things we are provided in the venues we perform in. Now we carry two five-gallon coolers, and each of the band and crew carries a stainless-steel water bottle.

On our buses we use water filters. My production manager estimates we save between 200 and 250 bottles each show, and up to 96 bottles every day on the buses. We are one of several tours that we know of who are making these kinds of changes.

There are also some venues and festivals that are eliminating single-use plastics. Living in Los Angeles, I had long believed that having one’s own sealed water bottle was safer than trusting the municipal water supply.

My children grew up drinking from plastic water bottles. But not long ago I heard a radio programme that dispelled that myth, and a few others, including the viability of recycling all the plastic bottles produced every year.

Most of the bottled water sold as spring water in America is, in fact, tap water. There don’t seem to be any legal barriers to selling what comes out of a pipe in New Jersey or Los Angeles as spring water, or mountain water, or Arctic water, at least not in the United States.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1293678/Jackson-Browne-I-Blame-bottled-water-oil-spill.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#ixzz0uHUCO2kD
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1293678/Jackson-Browne-I-Blame-bottled-water-oil-spill.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#ixzz0uHTyxODU

NSA Water Filters

Hey Mom! Have you ever looked at all those bottles of water at the supermarket that are competing for your hard earned dollar and wondered how they got there? It wasn’t that long ago that we all drank tapwater without a second thought. What’s changed?

Well, when it comes to the safety of your tapwater here in the Washington metro area, the answer is not much! Water utilities in the city and surrounding suburbs test their product – tapwater – every day. Tapwater in this part of the country routinely meets federal safety standards for various concentrations, including lead. With the exception of a few brief and well publicized periods, tapwater in this part of the country was safe to drink when you were a kid, and it’s safe to drink now!

http://www.lonad.com/2010/07/20/tap-water-the-safe-and-healthy-choice/

NSA Water Filters

Common sense tells us that bottled water is an extravagance that wastes resources and pollutes the earth. However, I had no idea to what extent until I started doing research for this column.

Here are a few random facts from various sources:

- Imagine a water bottle filled a quarter of the way up with oil. That’s about how much oil was needed to produce the container.
National Geographic

- Tap water costs about $0.002 per gallon, or two-tenths of a cent, compared to $0.89 to $8.26 per gallon for bottled water, the latter several times the cost of gasoline to fuel our cars.
Food & Water Watch

- Americans will buy an estimated 25 billion single-service, plastic water bottles this year, and eight out of 10, or 22 billion of them, will end up in a landfill.
Container Recycling Institute

The fact is, tap water is just as clean and safe as bottled water, and more so in many cases.

http://www.newsregister.com/article/44975-bottled+water+bad+bargain

NSA Water Filters