I will admit, I drink bottled water at home.  Our water is very hard, containing a lot of iron.  Our water did pass the last safety check.  The problem is it does not taste like crystal clear pristine water.

The jury is out when it comes to plastic bottle safety.

Some say plastic bottles are safe when they are made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET).  I use PET bottles and containers for my lotion and cream products.  

Some reports say PET bottles are safe to reuse (for water or food), only as long as they are washed properly, just like we would wash a cup or a glass.

Some reports say potentially harmful substances leach from bottles when the bottles become too warm (for example), or when the bottles are etched or reused.  Others say plastic bottles are safe as long as they do not contain bisphenol-a (BPA).

The last couple of cases of water that I have purchased have tasted “off,” which brings me to thinking about what I (we) are drinking.  I know the contents are considered safe, but it makes a person wonder…shouldn’t we simply invest in glass and stainless steel, and drink the safest water we can get our hands on? I am on a well, the water has been tested, I know it is safe. 

Tap water in a city is another issue.  Again, throw the hands up in the air and say, what do you do? I read headlines yesterday that said city tap water can contain undetected drugs and waste.  The water cannot be tested for each and every substance, the testing process is monumental.  But still, some are saying that bottled water is less safe than tap water, based on this report from the United States Government Accountability Office.

Do we just do our best? Hope for the best? Are  spoiled? Should we get used to what comes from our faucets and deal with it?

Yes,  this blog normally sticks to cheese, bread, slow food, urban farming, etc., but I have been thinking and reading about something that is worth a post. According to Bottled Water Blues, “Consumers typically buy bottled water under the misconception that it is safer, purer or healthier than tap water. Bottled water companies have spent billions to manipulate consumers into believing that bottled water is safer or healthier than tap water.”

According to the Huffington Post, approximately 40 billion plastic water bottles are thrown away in the United States every year.  Fewer than 20% get recycled.

The more i read, the more it looks like the water bottles we are buying are a waste of money and are terrible for the environment. Watch this NBC video:

How many water bottles and plastic bags do you go through in a day, a week, or a year? Do you know where all of that plastic ends up?

One place appears to be the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is a massive area, twice the size of Texas, in the Pacfic ocean, between California and Hawaii, that is full of slowly degrading plastics.  According to wikipedia, “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also described as the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex, is a gyre of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean located roughly between 135° to 155°W and 35° to 42°N and estimated to be twice the size of Texas.^[1] The patch is characterized by exceptionally high concentrations of suspended plastic and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre.”

Listen to the NPR story on the Garbage Patch here. There’s even a whole website devoted to what we can do to    break down the Pacific garbage patch.

Apparently, our addiction to plastics is getting the best of us. According to to How Stuff Works, “Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world’s oceans. The United Nations Environment Program estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic. In some areas, the amount of plastic outweighs the amount of plankton by a ratio of six to one. Of the more than 200 billion pounds of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the ocean. Seventy percent of that eventually sinks, damaging life on the ocean floor. The rest floats; much of it ends up in gyres and the massive garbage patches that form there, with some plastic eventually washing up on a distant shore.”

It seems to me that we have been using and disposing of plastics indiscriminately for years and years with no regard for what they are doing to the planet and how they will negatively affect our own health in the long term. It stands to reason, that the biodegradation of all of the plastic water bottles and plastic bags will lead to chemicals polluting the ocean and the earth and ending up back in our own food system.

So, what to do?

1. Stop using and disposing of plastic water bottles! Break the habit and tell others in your life to do the same. Get a filtration system at home and buy an aluminum water bottle to carry with you during the day. It’s important to use aluminum or something stable, like glass, as according to the latest science, plastic water bottles that we re0use may not be healthy. See this msnbc report.

2. Stop using platsic bags! Use re-usable canvas or other type of bags.

I am going to try to lessen my contribution to the 40 billion water bottles that are disposed of in the US each year. Are you?

Grab Bag Bottled Water Message:

Thanks to Pat M. for sending this along… we really need to get a handle on this bottled water habit…. here’s the facts:

Grab Bag Vitamin D Update:

If you’re not having your Vitamin D levels checked (and probably supplementing at this point), you’re behind the 8 ball. My husband just had his annual cardiology check up and, for the first time, the doc ordered Vitamin D levels to be added to the blood panels. The word “pandemic” (see video link below) has been tied to the concern of vitamin D deficiency for us all.

If you need another reason to pay attention to your vitamin D levels…

University of Michigan School of Public Health reviewed data on over 550 women from records starting in 1992. Those that were running low on D back then were approximately THREE TIMES MORE LIKELY TO HAVE HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE 15 years later. Get your vitamin D tested and, if low, supplement with 1,000 to 5,000 IUs per day. A rich resource of Vitamin D information can be found HERE. And I would encourage you to watch THIS VIDEO of “The Vitamin D Pandemic and Its Health Consequences”, an informative and entertaining lecture delivered by Michael Holick, PhD, MD, professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics and director of the General Clinical Research Center at Boston University Medical Center.

Did you know that Americans each drank an average of 218 bottles of water in 2007? bottles – 66 billion, in fact! Only 23% of them are recycled so on a daily basis, a staggering 140 million disposable plastic bottles go to landfills in the USA. That’s enough, laid end to end, to reach from New Jersey to China and back every day.

It doesn’t take an engineering degree to understand that this is a problem. It is extremely wasteful. To begin with, finite natural resources like water and oil are being consumed in the manufacturing of bottled water. It takes 4 ounces of oil and 51 ounces of water to make one 17 ounce bottle of water! Then after their use, 50 billion disposable plastic water bottles are dumped in landfills each year where they will take over 700 years to decompose.

There is a simple solution to this problem. Drink tap water instead of bottled water and use a reusable bottle when you are on-the-go. Even if you filter and flavor your tap water, you will save money because bottled water is 1000 times more expensive than tap water. There are many reusable bottles on the market today. For a high performance, high quality water bottle, try a stainless steel bottle from Back2Tap.

Recently I realised that my expensive Nalgene water bottles and ‘premium’ range Lock & Lock lunch box were all made of BPA-leeching polycarbonate. Many others have already blogged about unsafe food plastics and the BPA problem before (see Just Bento: What are Japanese plastic bento boxes made of? and The SIGG water bottle controversy and the water bottle conundrum) and there’s plenty of information on the web about how to choose safer plastics.

The good news is that newer Nalgene bottles are made from BPA-free Tritan. Look out for the ‘Nalgene Choice’ labelling that identifies the new-range bottles. The recycling category “7” includes both BPA-polycarbonates as well as Tritan, so don’t use that as a conclusive identification of the material used.

The two styles of Lock n Lock Sport bottles I have been using for some years are also categorised as a “7”, and as they are from the pre-BPA-consciousness days, there’s a high chance both are polycarbonate. Some other Lock & Lock bottles are safer “5” plastics.

However, Lock & Lock has come out with several new lines of bottles, made with Tritan and all marked with large ‘BPA-free’ labels. These are not yet found on the international website, but are in the Singapore stores. I picked up two types on 30% discount at NTUC Fairprice a few weeks ago.

500ml

600ml

My main gripe is that the largest bottle is only 600ml, and that only in the range where the screw-lid is not attached to the bottle itself, which means the chance of dropping the lid and having to wash it before screwing it back on, not very practical when one is outdoors.

I  do love the positive screw grooves on the green bottle, but there’s something else that annoys me, which is that the screw grooves result in a lot of water dripping when I drink! I’ve had the same problem with insulated mugs too. The problem seems to be much less when the screw top mouth is small, such as with this narrow-mouthed Nalgene style which I also have (unfortunately an old bottle, in polycarbonate).

So maybe I should stick to flip-top bottles? However, in my experience, the flip-tops can easily be accidentally popped open and I’ve had many spills inside my bags before . So I try to put them on the outside mesh pocket of my rucksack or placed upright at the side of handbag.

The other thing about flip-tops is that if the mouth is too small, such as this Lock & Lock sports bottle, it’s hard to drink without creating a vacuum seal with your mouth.

My water bottle wish list:
* 750ml
* BPA-free
* lid that is attached to bottle
* non-drip mouth
* mouth that’s not too small
* tall, slim shape that fits into standard water bottle pockets on sports bags
* and if it’s cute, that’s just a bonus ^^

When the Patriots Path Council called to invite Back2Tap to their Jamboree celebrating 100 years of Boy Scouts, I didn’t really know what to expect. Preparing for the “jambo,” I began to wonder whether any boys would visit a table presenting the evils of bottled water when they could be spear throwing, mountain boarding, bullwhip cracking, or watching an army tank run over a car.

In spite of having about 175 cool activities to choose from, a couple hundred of the 4300 scouts and leaders did find time to spend at the Back2Tap table this past Saturday. Every single boy and leader listened intently, asked questions, and seemed genuinely excited about our campaign for getting back to drinking tap water and using reusable bottles. This was definitely the best crowd I’ve ever worked with as an exhibitor. I also learned a lot – from the challenges of having private well water to the best type of carabiner.

Interestingly, even these outdoorsy community-minded folks who had reusable bottles clipped to their belts weren’t familiar with the astounding facts about bottled water waste. Many of them told us that if people knew about the:

• 140 million disposable bottles going to landfills everyday,
• 700 years it takes for plastic to decompose,
• 4 ounces of oil it takes to make each disposable bottle,
• 1000 times greater cost of bottled water, and
• more stringent regulatory oversight of tap water compared to bottled water,

they would be persuaded to drink tap water from reusable bottles instead of bottled water. Most people just don’t know about the hidden costs of their consumer choices. To illustrate these impacts, we had a sequencing activity where scouts put the 18 steps in the Life Cycle of a Disposable Plastic Water Bottle in order (see photo). Impacts on the environment were obvious at many steps in the Life Cycle. Before leaving, they were also able to take our Bottled Water IQ Test to see how much they had learned.

Obviously, there is a lot more work to do getting these facts and concepts out to people. Most of the scouts and scout leaders left our exhibit table eager to spread the Back2Tap message with the rest of their troop and with their communities. This is exactly the type of help the Back2Tap movement needs because it is not a message that large multi-national corporations with large advertising budgets is going to sponsor. It will take community leaders like scouts, teachers, PTO members, municipal volunteers, and green activists spreading the word, community by community. To find out how to help foster the Back2Tap movement, visit our community page.

Congratulations to the Patriots Path Council and the participating scout troops for organizing such an exciting and inspiring event. It was an honor to meet and talk with so many of you – thank you for sharing your opinions and suggestions with Back2Tap.

1 Billion.  That is the number of disposable plastic bottles that could be kept out of landfills every year if just 10% of the students in the US, K-12, would switch to reusable bottles.   This number is hard to believe and hard to visualize, but we’ve crunched the numbers and it’s true.   The  solution to this staggering amount of plastic waste is to reuse.   By getting your children’s school to promote reusable bottles, you can help them “Join the Reusolution” and save that billion bottles.

Eliminating 10% of the disposable plastic bottles used by school children would also save  31 million gallons of oil, almost 400 million gallons of water, and 12 billion balloons worth (or 120 billion grams) of CO2 each year.  The resources it takes to make these bottles is surprising, especially when you add them all up.

Collectively, parents would save over $25 million dollars in the first year by switching to tap water-based drinks from single serving drinks in disposable plastic bottles.  This more than justifies the purchase of good quality reusable bottles.

To foster completely litter-less lunches, Back2Tap is offering reusable sandwich wraps and snack bags as well as custom-logoed stainless steel bottles for your school’s green fundraiser this year.  Save money, save the planet  - Join the Reusolution!

OK, I haven’t seen the movie “The Age of Stupid” yet, and from the looks of it, it won’t be easy to find it in a theatre nearby for quite a while, if ever.  There are so many interesting eco-films out there  that never come to a theatre near me.  What’s up with that?  In this day and age, it seems downright ridiculous and wrong to drive 45 minutes on a highway to see a movie, especially a green flick!

I’ve read three reviews of this movie so far this week:  one says it’s overboard gloomy, one says it’s a wake up call, and one reports that it has already inspired a huge greenhouse gas reduction campaign in Great Britain called 10:10 (reduce emissions by 10% by 2010 – that would be in a few months!).

As a co-founder of Back2Tap, I figure I’ve got to see “The Age of Stupid”  because it rails on people who think they are green simply because they recycle their disposable plastic bottles.   The movie makes the point that it isn’t going to be as simple as recycling more or buying organic.  We’re going to have to “reinvent” the way we live in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Thankfully, there is one lifestyle change we can all make without much effort – the way we drink water and use disposable plastic bottles.  Tap water takes 800 times less energy to deliver than bottled water according to “The Age of Stupid.”    We can all drink tap water from reusable bottles instead of bottled water and significantly reduce our waste of resources and carbon footprint.  That is the primary message Back2Tap shares with schools, groups, and anyone who will listen.   Join our Reusolution!

Many consumers feel that the price of bottled water is worth the convenience that the bottles provide.   The fact of the matter is that the price of a single 18 ounce bottle of water is enough to buy 100 gallons of tap water.   That takes care of the price factor.   In an effort to counteract the convenience factor of bottled water, Back2Tap offers customizable and reusable stainless steel water bottles.   With the price and convenience factors of bottled water now in perspective, you do the math… Is bottled water really as convenient as it used to seem?

Oil consumption is one of the main concerns of the environmental “Green” movement.  It is a valuable and finite natural resource.  Over the course of one year, 17 million barrels of oil are wasted in the production of plastic water bottles.  That same amount of oil could be used for much more necessary and productive reasons.  For example, the oil used for one year of water bottle production could be used to fuel 1,000,000 cars for that same year.   By utilizing Back2Tap’s reusable stainless steel water bottles, we can do our part to help conserve our oil supply for future generations.

The consumption of oil releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into Earth’s atmosphere and contributes to global warming.   Power plants, cars, buildings, and factories release immense amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.   Driving a hybrid vehicle in one way to reduce both fuel consumption and harmful emissions.  Surprisingly, water bottle production plants produce and release 2.5 million tons of unnecessary carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere every year.   By using reusable stainless steel water bottles from Back2Tap, we can do our part to reduce the rate of global warming.   These stainless steel water bottles serve the same environmental purpose as hybrid vehicles.   They help to reduce the amount of oil consumed and the amount of harmful emissions released into the atmosphere.

Baby Soda Bottles: These are made from the pre blown plastic bottles that are for water or soft drink. You can see what I am talking about in this old post.

These are good for storing just about anything small you don’t want crushed, spilled, or dampened: Batteries, earbud headphones, mini-first aid kit, medicine.

The ones I liberated from my son’s Scientific Explorer kit are also sold individually as Tube Vaults by County Comm, but the best deal I’ve found is 15 for $10 from Steve Spangler Science. According to their site, the Baby Soda Bottles are actually our ubiquitous 2-liter soda bottles before they’ve been heated and stretched, which explains why the caps are interchangeable with soda bottle caps.

These food-grade polyethylene test tubes are dishwasher safe, strong, waterproof and, yes, I’ve used one to hide a geocache!

A new documentary, Tapped , is being shown for a week in NYC at the IFC Center starting today. Made by the director and producers who brought us Who Killed the Electric Car, this film takes a look at the history of bottled water and the strange path it has taken more recently including the unregulated and quality of water issues and the political and ownership battles over water.

Frightening and sadly true facts are presented like only 20 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States are recycled, and far too many of the rest probably end up in the Pacific Garbage Patch (a floating island of plastic waste the size of Rhode Island and growing). Not only does bottled water create physical waste, but also causes the waste of consumer dollars. Many are paying more than the price of gasoline for water that’s marketed as “pure,” but in reality is largely unregulated, full of harmful toxins like BPA, and far less safe for drinking than free tap water.

According to Claire Thompson’s article from August 3 in Grist Magazine: the film  ”succeeds at making the industry reps look like total jerks. A few too many mid-interview cutaways to Soechtig looking concerned came off as a little journalistically self-important, but Tapped does a solid job of covering every aspect of this damaging industry and inspiring more outrage than despair. It features interviews with the likes of Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin and Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), not to mention some footage of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) tearing into an FDA rep at a government hearing.”

So, does this film preach to the converted? Will enough people see this and be moved to NEVER buy bottled water again? It is very sad that so many people feel trapped; they will not drink the water that is provided by our government because although it will not make you sick (because it is bacteriologically safe), it can make you sick other ways so what else can they do but buy a bottle of water! Which do you do when faced with that choice? Clearly a point of use filtration system in our homes is key. What do you do when you run out of water in your stainless steel water bottle?

It is raining, and I know that even the water falling from the sky may not be safe to drink.

Via: Organic Consumers

20 oz Silver Crow, I love you

Extolling the virtues of my (now not-so-) new stainless steel water bottles has been on my to do list for a while. The fire was lit, this morning, by an op-ed in the Globe, entitled Bottled-water scam finally feels squeeze.

According to Jackson’s piece, “Three-quarters of water bottles end up in landfills.” Add to that the following:

Americans bought a total of 31.2 billion liters of water in 2006, sold in bottles ranging from the 8-ounce aquapods popular in school lunches to the multi-gallon bottles found in family refrigerators and office water coolers. [Pacific Institute]

That means that in 2006 alone, 23.4 billion liters worth of water bottles ended up in landfills thanks to American citizens. One year. Ouch.

There is a place for bottled water… like when you’re in Southeast Asia and you don’t want to get sick (open to better alternatives!), or you’re out at a nice dinner, and you want sparkling rather than still. The rest of the time, stainless steel is the way: durable, safe, and easy to clean.

I am a coffee fiend; I’ll drink it right up until I crawl into bed (to the detriment of my health, I’m sure). Drinking water is something I’m really bad at. I know I need it, but I just don’t think of it. While living in Boulder years ago, I discovered that a water bottle stuffed in my back pocket (the jeans were baggier back in the day) solved improved this for me. Have bottle, will drink. Why I am more likely to drink water out of a bottle than a cup or glass?! It’s inconvenient, this bad habit.

Enter the gym. When I finally started using my gym membership, I found that I drink lots of water at the gym. I know that reusing plastic bottles is a bad idea, but I was guiltily doing it each time. After a few weeks of regular gym-going, my sensible self kicked my procrastinator self’s ass, and I started researching stainless bottles online. I had a visual in mind, which made it a little more complicated … I wanted a white bottle with pretty graphics. “Pretty” might seem wide open, but I’m picky when it comes to design. Me, making things more complicated? Never!

I finally settled on the 13 oz Leaves model made by EarthLust. It was smaller than I really needed for the gym, but I am willing to sacrifice the moment of workout it takes to hop off the cardio machine for a refill if it means satisfying the design issue. Two thumbs down on the company name, but whatever.

Ever the Googler, I found this same bottle for a buck or two cheaper through a store on Amazon (not as good as bricks and mortar, I know!), and bought it. Big mistake! When the package arrived, it had what looked like photocopied grey leaves printed on cheap/thin white paint that was already flaking off. The most egregious part? It wasn’t even stainless steel! The threads on the inside of the top were some kind of yellow metal. Planning to go to the gym that night with my trusty new bottle, I was furious. It was a cheap knock-off; I’d been had.

It is at this point that I crossed over into a realm that I’m not comfortable or familiar with… I blew the whistle on the seller:

I just wanted to inform you of what appears to be a knock-off of your product. I purchased what I expected to be a green leaves 13oz bottle from Online Fitness (via Amazon), and received a poorly printed bottle with your logo, grey leaves, scratches, a cheap lid, and non-stainless threading!

Sorry for the very poor quality cell phone photos, but I’m at work and don’t have a real camera here. I wanted you to have some proof in case this is something they’re doing regularly. I’m sending this bottle back to them for a refund. I’ve also attached the email response I received from the seller informing me where I can return the item to (onlinecomponents.com, another company).

I am now (you can imagine) afraid to make another purchase of this item online… Can you tell me any stores in Boston or Cambridge (Massachusetts) that carry this item, so that I can check it out and make the purchase in person?

It sounds so lame, rereading it (even ignoring the grammar issues), but I was pissed. In my mind I began labeling myself “Tattle Tale” and “Narc.” I had entered the world of people-who-point-fingers-at-rule-breakers. My shame morphed into delight, however, when I received this response:

Why don’t you send me your address and we’ll send you one directly…

Thanks so much for your email!!

Allison
EarthLust

Ha! That’s why all those annoying kids did it! Tattling pays!!

To shorten an already long post, I forgave EarthLust for their shitty name. The real bottle showed up, and it’s perfect for the gym. I even bought another bottle from them for home (20 oz Silver Crow), and a larger (1L) but otherwise identical one for L. What can I say, we have similar taste in graphics. We now hydrate more effectively (loads of room for improvement here, still). The end.

p.s. That 1 L Stone Spiral is pretty sweet… just sayin’.

Protect your health, save the planet…don’t buy plastic bottles

If you want to make a small change that will have a big impact on your health and on the environment stop drinking beverages out of plastic bottles.  Most types of plastic bottles leach chemicals into the drinks they contain.  These chemicals have been linked to breast and uterine cancer, newborns with undesended testicles, low sperm count and more health problems.

Bottled water is marketed as being purer, but the reality is that bottled water must undergo fewer tests for impurities than US municipal (tap) water.  Post marketing testing of bottled waters has found 22% of brands to be contaminated with mold, bacteria or cancer causing chemicals…all of which are removed by the more stringently regulated cleaning of tap water.  In addition, you are paying a high price tag for “pure glacial water” which, in 25% of cases, comes from a tap which is virtually free. 

Stop buying plastic drink bottles for the environment.  Plastic bottles create a huge amount of waste that can not biodegrade.  Recycling helps, but a large portion of bottles still end up in landfills, polluting the earth.  The globe is entering a water crisis.  Water rationing will occur within our lifetime.  The production of plastic bottles uses a tremendous amount of water.  In fact, more clean water is wasted in the production process than the amount of water actually bottled.  Then these bottles are shipped all over the US and the world wasting tons of fossil fuel, which creates green house gases, which are causing global warming (another tragic story.)

Buy an aluminum or stainless steel canteen to avoid plastic chemicals and excess waste and enjoy clean tap water.  If you want more purity, put a NSF International certified filter on your tap.  Water isn’t the only bottled beverage you should avoid.  Sport drinks, soda and juices in plastic bottles also absorb plastic chemicals.

SIGG water bottles, which have long been perceived to be the eco-friendly alternative to plastic water bottles, has just confessed something that has sent huge ripples through the media – all of their bottles manufactured before August of last year actually DO contain BPA.

Source:
http://www.inhabitots.com/2009/08/22/sigg-scandal-sigg-eco-water-bottles-had-bpa-all-along/

SIGG water bottles, which have long been perceived to be the eco-friendly alternative to plastic water bottles, has just confessed something that has sent huge ripples through the media – all of their bottles manufactured before August of last year actually DO contain BPA.

Source:
http://www.inhabitots.com/2009/08/22/sigg-scandal-sigg-eco-water-bottles-had-bpa-all-along/

In Japan, many people consider a water ionizer filtration system as an essential appliance. In a society where more than one hundred million people share a fairly limited landscape, pure drinking water can be hard to come by — environmental contaminants and other pollutants can compromise the country’s municipal water supply. For this reason, water ionizer filtration systems have been a required appliance in Japanese homes for several decades.

What is a Water Ionizer and How Does it Work
A water ionizer filtration system takes basic tap water, runs it through a process of electrolysis in order to produce two types of water: acidic and alkaline. These two waters are created by “charging” the water with hydroxyl ions. This changes the pH levels in the water and produces water with an acidic pH and water with an alkaline pH.

The acidic water is ideal for cleaning with. Replacing your modern cleaning supplies with acidic water is a great way to reduce your toxic load by limiting your exposure to chemicals and other toxins.

The alkaline water provides one of the best ways to supply the body with the antioxidants it needs to protect against disease and promote health. Scientists and researchers explain that acidic environments promote disease while alkaline environments promote health. For this reason, the acidic water should never be used for drinking or cooking with, while the alkaline water can be consumed regularly to provide the body with a constant source of pure, healthy drinking water.

It’s these types of health benefits which have resulted in the water ionizer filtration system being a favored appliance in Japanese homes. It’s these same benefits, which are causing the water ionizer filtration system to quickly become a “must have” appliance in American homes as well.

To learn more about the health benefits of a water ionizer filtration system, visit Tyent Giant.

What is Kangen Water
Kangen water is quickly becoming the favored water in the U.S.; however, Kangen water has been consumed by Japanese health savvy population for decades. The term “Kangen” is a Japanese word which means “return to origin” and the idea behind the water is to return to the healthy, pure, safe drinking water of antiquity — before plastics, toxins, and other pollutants caused us to worry about the water we’re drinking.

Kangen water filtration systems have been manufactured by the Japanese based company since in the mid 70s with the goal of providing local residents with a drinking water that was both pure and safe. The Kangen water filtration systems take standard tap water and run it through a process of electrolysis to create a “charged” water full of hydroxyl ions and the benefits of Kangen water are numerous.

Benefits of Kangen Water
The Kangen Water company was built using a multilevel marketing model of distribution that has been wildly successful. The success of the Kangen Water company is in part due to the many health benefits of Kangen water.

• Kangen Water is Antioxidant-rich: Kangen water is full of antioxidants, which means that the ordinary tap water coming out of the faucet becomes a sort of liquid antioxidant once its run through a Kangen water filtration system.
• Kangen Water Restores the Body’s pH: The hectic, fast paced nature of modern society often results in eating prepackaged, convenience, and fast foods all of which push the body into an unhealthy acidic pH state. Kangen water restores the body to a healthy, slightly alkaline pH state.
• Kangen Water Tastes Better than Tap or Bottled Water: Okay, so this one isn’t exactly a health benefit, but it sure is nice when the thing being consumed for health purposes actually tastes great.

To learn more about the healthful benefits of Kangen water and learn more about Kangen water filtration systems visit Tyent Giant today.

How does recycling affect the environment in 2 different cities:

 Environment is highly affected by recycling which is becoming more and more a daily part of our lives, if we want to help in cleaning the environment and become a part of the solution rather than being a part of the problem. Solid waste generation has increased from 3.66 to 4.62 pounds/ per person/ per day between 1980 and 2007, but also recycling increased from 10% in 1980 to more than 33% in 2007.  According to the EPA, plastics accounted for 12.1 percent of the 254 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2007 of that, only 6.8 percent was recycled.

Plastic recycling affecting the environment

1st City to ban Plastic water bottles:

A couple of weeks ago, the town of Bundanoon, about two hours south of Sydney, Australia, has banned the sale of plastic water bottles.  Merchants are offering alternatives to their population for reusable water bottles, as charging them a small amount to fill their reusable water bottles with purified water, or to offer the reusable bottles at the same price of the disposable ones. Banning the plastic bottles will reduce the fossil fuel energy consumption of petroleum and natural gas, used to manufacture PET (Form of plastic found in water bottles packaging).

styrofoam recycling affecting the environment

 1st city that could have banned using Styrofoam:

While California has shut down the proposition to ban using Styrofoam for fear of loosing more jobs in the state, if this bill would have passed CA would have been the state to ban Styrofoam foam containers The reason that Styrofoam is bad for our environment is made from Expanded Polystyrene which is an end product meaning it can be only be recycled to more Styrofoam, the good news is that a bacteria found in beetles can break down Styrofoam into smaller pieces (Not decompose it).

 Other good news is that the State might have not passed the bill but there are more than 20 cities in CA banned Styrofoam food containers.

Next blog will be discussing the future of plastic recycling

Sahar Andrade

www.linkedin.com/in/saharandrade

Twitter:@saharAndrade

www.saharconsulting.com

So Mr. Miller is lacing up his jackboots and preparing to stormtroop all over our civil rights again.

Yes, I do believe that going to the store to buy a plastic bottle of clean, clear-tasting water is a right we should not have to give up, nor should someone be able to dictate to us that the only water we drink comes from our faucets.

I already bought my stainless steel bottle and when Etobicoke tap water doesn’t taste and smell like mould, maybe I’ll start drinking it.  And don’t tell me I should buy a Brita and filter my tap water. What exactly are my tax dollars doing, if not paying for things like clean drinking water?
 
(Btw, what’s the carbon footprint of those stainless steel bottles? Are they made locally or shipped in from China? What does it take to make the steel, run the presses to draw the form out, electroplate them (mine is red) put the little rubber doo-dads on them etc. Are they really the secret to saving the planet? I’m just asking these questions, if anyone has the answers I’d be grateful.)

A couple of other questions come to mind–like what about plastic pop bottles?

The city of Toronto stopped allowing the sale of plastic water bottles from vending machines on city property, but pop, iced tea, energy drinks still come out of those machines in plastic bottles.

What’s the reasoning there?

Is a ban on plastic water bottles really going to “keep our beautiful country pristine”?

As I drive to work each morning, at any given time I see newspapers, coffee cups, potato chip bags, food wrappers, flyers, pillows, mattresses (yes!) old tools, and assorted house waste littering the sides of the highways. Not to mention the terrible unkempt state of the roadside vegetation (I hesitate to call it grass since the pesticide ban) which rarely gets cut, presumably because the GTA is trying to save money. By mid-Spring the roadsides look like hell, but this is another subject for another time.

And I guess my other question would be why the first knee-jerk reaction to everything considered suspect is to ban it? How about studying the reality of it, considering responsible compromise and trying to work out a suitable solution instead of resorting to the totalitarian oppression of an outright ban? Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen in a democratic society?

Isn’t the root cause of the trash pollution really the sloppy, undisciplined, careless, rude, sociopathic members of our society who are unable or unwilling to respect their surroundings and dispose of their garbage properly?

It seems to me that the populace loves to jump on bandwagons, even though they don’t always know who’s driving them and where they will end up.

I’ve been waging a war on empty plastic water bottles tossed onto the streets for a few years now. Earlier this week, I noticed a full unopened plastic water bottle on my street. I did not pick it up as I thought a walker or runner might have placed it there intentionally. Since it was still there today, I picked it up, emptied the contents on a young tulip poplar in my yard and recycled the bottle.

I’ve also found full bottles of beer left behind on an abandoned lot. Those I emptied on the ground before I recycled the bottles. Now I know that beer is good for my compost pile. Next time I’ll dump the beeer there.

I would never drink an unopened bottle of anything that I find. Too risky for me.

I first noticed it last summer during my daily walks: more plastic water bottles and soda cans on the residential streets in my suburban subdivision. These are not drive-by litter. I assume that the bottles and cans are being tossed in the street by out of school youth playing in the summer heat.

Growing up during the late 50s and 60s, I had to come inside for Kool-Aid or water from a glass. When I bought a soda from a gas station cooler, it was glass and returned for a deposit. I do not long for those days, but I am tired of picking up discarded water and soda bottles/cans in my neighborhood. Recycle them. Reuse them.