Secrets of the City

I put tap water in a Britta pitcher and drink that. I try to never buy bottled water. It still kind of amazes me that the whole bottled water thing caught on. It’s so strange.

I drink tap water. I have a soda water maker and put it through that.

There is only a few short days in the Spring that I won’t drink the water because the smell grosses me out. But 360 days a year I’m drinking tap.

Isn’t fluoride just the old vaccine? None of that black-helicopter mind control for me, thanks.

We also have a Britta filter. While I will drink bottled water on the road, I don’t buy it for regular consumption at home.

While some (including our own kwatt) have mocked the city’s pro tap PR campaign, it’s real goal is to sell other municipalities on the idea of buying water services from Minneapolis — a service that generates income for the city.

Minneapolis spent 180 thousand dollars on this campaign.

But what is the ROI? $180k might not be much if there is a good ROI.

Water, smarter…the real story is cancer in the air! Escape to North Dakota!

MPR answering kc!’s question:

“…Golden Valley, New Hope, Crystal, Columbia Heights, Hilltop and parts of Bloomington and Edina buy and use Minneapolis water. They pay a total of around $10 million a year.”

Ten big ones a year for water? I’m in the wrong business!

It could be a good ROI. I just wanted to bring this up as part of the story. Link here.

Do people seriously buy bottled water for everyday use? Sometimes we but bottles when we have outdoor parties, etc. But for everyday drinking?

Baker, my parents do. They get the giant packs at Sam’s Club or Costco or whatever.

Per my friend the water consultant, Britta pitchers don’t do jack sh**.

I like the taste of Mpls tap water. I don’t like SLP tap water. So I buy those massive jugs for drinking water, and use tap for everything else, including coffee, tea, cooking, etc.

The Rat buys fancy Italian bottled water.

Go ahead, say something.

Per my friend the water consultant, Britta pitchers don’t do jack sh**.

Maybe it’s a placebo effect but whenever I’ve used a Britta pitcher filled with St. Paul’s sometimes-scummy-tasting tap water (especially late summer, when Lake Phalen’s water level is low), it magically removes the scummy-fishy taste.

Jane;

Consumer Reports disagrees with your friend the water consultant rating Brita as the highest-rated carafe-style filter.

You have to subscribe to them to read the review though.

My mother-in-law only drinks bottled water. We drink it from the tap. Maple Grove water also tastes nasty. But, Shefzilla makes an interesting argument that the bottled water issue is a giant red herring. That there are other larger wastes of water. Frankly, I think we might be better off convincing people to put a brick in their toilet tank and use less water per flush. Or take $100 and replace 1800 old toilets with new water conserving toilets for $180,000.

Huh. I am a big fan of Consumer Reports. Maybe my friend doesn’t know jack sh**. Or maybe he was saying all those carafe-style filters are bunk. So Brita winning high ratings would not impress him. I excuse myself from this debate since I only care what water tastes like, and those carafe thingies don’t improve SLOP water. (That was supposed to be SLP water but I prefer my typo.)

You have to subscribe to them to read the review though.

Or go to the library.

I see people who obviously cannot afford much purchasing large amounts of bottled water at the grocery store all the time. It makes me sad.

jason- I don’t think the argument is that bottled water is a waste of water. It is that bottled water is a)transported using ships/trucks/trains long distances using fossil fuels and that b) it is in plastic that may or may not be recycled, using fossil fuels.

Jason, I don’t think waste of water is a primarily issue. After all, if you’re drinking the water, it’s not really wasted.

The biggest environmental issues I’ve seen cited with bottled water is all the plastic and glass used to bottle it, plus the energy consumption to transport the now bottled water.

There are some localities that are alarmed about their water being bottled and shipped elsewhere, so that’s another issue.

@jane: Maybe I don’t understand your terminology but the Britta filters I’ve used are not “carafe-style.” The filters are charcoal cartridges:

Britta Space Saver Water Filter

Here’s a user guide, too. [PDF file]

Here’s what I don’t understand. The water is in the store and on the shelf. Some of it is bottled at the source from municipal water supplies, Dasani and Aquafina, to name a couple, I think.

Others like Evian come in from France or the spring waters.

Do people here want them to go out of business or leave the area? People who drive trucks, bottle the water, handle the product, do sourcing and buying all earn a living. In a PC Green World, should they have to find another job?

Regardless of the reasons, consumers seem to want the product.

Tobacco companies pay people too.

So, you have a point to make?

Dasani is just the water they use to make Coke, but without Coke.

I actually like the taste of tap water. Sioux Falls has great tap water. Strangely, I think bottled water (or even Culligan) tastes weird. SLP water, however, tastes like cancer.

noodleman: that’s exactly what Consumer Reports called a carafe-style filter for the purpose of their testing. The filter is in the carafe as opposed to being attached to the faucet, or under the sink, or as a whole-house filter system.

And to jane’s point, the carafe-style systems performed poorly when rated against the under-sink and whole-house systems. However their price and ease-of-use are vastly different as well.

She actually likes the Soo Foo tap water b/c it tastes like her cousin. Burn!

champs, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk… ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children’s ice cream.

You know when fluoridation first began?

Nineteen hundred and forty-six. Nineteen forty-six, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works.

@General: Bottled water is also fluoridated, perhaps more so than tap water. Fluoridation also occurs naturally. There’s a huge fluoridated aquifer west of the Rockies, and the Great Lakes are also naturally fluoridated.

Funny, too, that the major push for national fluoridation was made during Eisenhower’s administration. Are you calling Ike a commie?

Rat, peoples jobs get made obsolete by technology, shipped off to maquiladoras, or third world countries in the name of globalization, free trade, economic progress, or what ever, all the time. Why should these guys be any different?

So, what would make the bottled water people’s jobs obsolete?

environmental wastefulness of the industry, people realizing it’s a scam, and that they can get the exact same product from the tap, any number of reasons. Take your pick.

The point, rat, is that the existence of certain jobs does not always justify what those jobs cause.

The shefzilla argument pisses me off, because they’re comparing coffee/etc and water as if people drink them the same way. Which uses more water and other resources in processing, tap water or bottled water? Bottled water, duh. I realize they’re trying to make a point that, hey! Other things use LOTS OF WATER TOO! But if you’re looking at ways to lessen the impact of bottled water, hopefully you will replace the Dasani with WATER and not coffee, beer, milk, or a cheeseburger shake.

Related – this water-usage flowchart by Good Magazine is really, uh, good.

Mmmm, cheeseburger shakes…

Re: water-usage chart. I think I’ll go buy me some beef. Maybe 10 pounds?

Re: Britta pitchers

I drink a lot of water from a water bottle. Mpls tap water is fine unfiltered and I usually fill my bottle with that, however, if the water has been sitting around in the bottle for a while (several hours) it gets a weird taste. The Brita pitcher filtered water does not develop the weird taste after hours or a day or 2.

Modern science shows that ingesting fluoride via the water supply is a health-robbing waste of toxapyers’ money. If the mayor would stop adding fluoride chemicals into the water supply (and the trace amounts of lead, arsenic and mercury that comes with it), he would save money, preserve health and teeth (Studies show when fluoridation ends, tooth decay actually goes down)

more info
http://www.FluorideAction.Net/health

If a great American like Gen. Jack D. Ripper says fluoridation is a commie plot to polute our precious bodily fluids, that’s good enough for me.

That nyscof guy, on the other hand, sounds like some comic character from a movie…

“The point, rat, is that the existence of certain jobs does not always justify what those jobs cause.”

That’s easy to say if it’s not your job in the balance.

Early studies show a reduction in 50-60 percent of childhood cavities when fluoridation was introduced; nowadays, when fluoride is also available in a number of additional sources, the reduction clocks in at about 18-40 percent: http://cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5014a1.htm

But there will always be naysayers out there, saying nay.

Max, for the sake of transperancy, should disclose your ties to the Evil Dental Empire that spreads these kind of lies (grin).

The only two cavities I have had in my life were while I was living in Bozeman, MT and they didn’t add fluoride.

Re: Bottled water.

I drink most of my water at home via bottles, more out of convenience than anything plus my dog likes to chew on the empties.

In Chicago they now charge a $0.05 tax per bottle of water that you buy. It’s not a deposit. Just a usage fee to cover recycling or disposal or city body dumping fees who knows it goes into the general budget.

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2007/dec/24/business/chi-watertaxdec24

General, I would be happy to mix you a cocktail of rain water and grain alcohol.

Make me one, too, but I’m warning you, no funny stuff!

Ryanol wrote: “The only two cavities I have had in my life were while I was living in Bozeman, MT and they didn’t add fluoride.”

Bozeman’s water is fluoridated. See http://www.bozeman.net/bozeman/water%20treatment/Default.aspx

Don’t believe everything you’re told.