Bottled Water Bonanza

Over the past few weeks, I've piled up a bunch of bottled water stuff (also see next post), and this post should clear the backlog.

1. Zero Water's PR department is advertising their super-duper water filtering pitcher. The good news is that it delivers pretty good water; the better news is that they reuse 95% of their filter when you exchange it for a "new" one (take that Brita!); the bad news is that the filters cost $12-13/each.
   
   It's ironic (sad) that many people with perfectly good tap water will buy these while some without such luck cannot afford to.
   
   
2. Don't forget to vote on the poll! It's on the sidebar, over there -------->
   
   
3. Meanwhile (via Aquadoc), we get "The true price of Fiji water", which notes that:

   Today, about one-third of Fiji's people lack access to clean drinking water, leading to incidents of typhoid and other water-related diseases.
   
   The irony of these statistics is that Fiji Water exported about 130 million liters of Fiji water in the past year. To present a "green face" to the world -- Fiji Water returns a token amount of money to bring clean water to certain areas of Fiji.
   
   [snip]
   
   In early July of 2008, the Fijian government proposed a tax on bottled water in order to generate income and to help improve and conserve the island's water resources. In a span of a couple of weeks -- the government had to abort the bottled water tax because of overt economic threats by the bottled water lobby.

   Perhaps we should call Fiji Water "Liquid Destruction and Corruption"?
   
   Addendum: See comments for why these excerpts may be incorrect/biased.
   
   
4. This Dec 2007 article is one of the best I've read about bottled water. Consider these tidbits:

   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. Its packaging and transport depend entirely on cheap fossil fuel. Yes, it's just a bottle of water--modest compared with the indulgence of driving a Hummer. But when a whole industry grows up around supplying us with something we don't need--when a whole industry is built on the packaging and the presentation--it's worth asking how that happened, and what the impact is.
   
   [snip]
   
   In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It's so good the EPA doesn't require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35. Put another way, if the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.
   
   [snip]
   
   ...according to those inside the business, half the price of a typical $1.29 bottle goes to the retailer. As much as a third goes to the distributor and transport. Another 12 to 15 cents is the cost of the water itself, the bottle and the cap. That leaves roughly a dime of profit. On multipacks, that profit is more like 2 cents a bottle.
   
   [snip]
   
   In 2007, Fiji Water will mark a milestone. "Even though you can drive for hours and hours on this island past cane fields," says Siplon, "sometime this year, Fiji Water will eclipse sugarcane as the number-one export." That is, the amount of sugar harvested and processed for export by some 40,000 seasonal sugar workers will equal in dollar value the amount of water bottled and shipped by 200 water bottlers.

   BTW, FIJI Water Company LLC is owned by Roll International Corp., which also owns POM Wonderful, Teleflora and Paramount Farms -- perhaps the biggest farm in California. Stewart Resnick is the CEO of Roll, the 312th largest private company in the world, with $1.5 billion in revenues. (A billion doesn't sound like much these days, eh?)
   
   
5. Need more reasons to stop drinking bottled water? Here are 20 reasons.
   
   
6. And here's a great video (a simulation by Cornell CS Prof. Doug James) comparing streams of recycled (13%) and non-recycled (the rest) bottles:
   
   
   
   
7. To learn all about recycling plastic bottles (e.g., the difference between the numbers, resins, where the recycled materials go, etc.), read this [PDF].
   
   
8. But wait, bottled water is getting cheaper. Maybe it IS a good time to drink bottled?

   You used to be able to get bottled water everywhere for much less than a dollar, but now prices have gone up so much that it's hard to justify the purchase. So it's easy to see why people would gravitate to dollar stores to find a bargain. I can get four 16.9 oz. bottles of water for $1 at the dollar store. That's great, but, if you use a lot of bottled water, it's better to buy it by the case.
   
   Wal-Mart often has sales on this brand, selling a case of 24 bottles for $2.65, which means you're only paying 11 cents a bottle, as opposed to 25 cents at the dollar store. Costco sells Nestle bottled water in a case of 35, 16.9 oz. bottles for $4.95 or 14 cents per bottle, a significant savings over the dollar store.

   WalMart is selling 3.17 gallons for $2.65! What a deal! That's only 250 times the price of tap water (often $3 for 750 gallons). Sign me up!
   
   
9. And finally, watch this for a bit of Aussie humour:
   
   
   The Smartest Man in The World

Bottom Line(s): There's no end of variety on this topic. (Feel free to add your own comments/links...)

hattips to JT, BB, JA and KS