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Britain
Bottled water 'is immoral'
2008-02-17
"Evian" is "Naive" spelled backwards.....
Drinking bottled water should be made as unfashionable as smoking, according to a government adviser. "We have to make people think that it's unfashionable just as we have with smoking. We need a similar campaign to convince people that this is wrong," said Tim Lang, the Government's naural resources commissioner.
This is the article I was referencing. Britain spends more time on bottled water than it does on kitting out its soldiers.
Phil Woolas, the environment minister, added that the amount of money spent on mineral water "borders on being morally unacceptable".

Their comments come as new research shows that drinking a bottle of water has the same impact on the environment as driving a car for a kilometre. Conservation groups and water providers have started a campaign against the £2 billion industry.

A BBC Panorama documentary, "Bottled Water: Who Needs It?", to be broadcast tomorrow says that in terms of production, a litre bottle of Evian or Volvic generates up to 600 times more CO2 than a litre of tap water.
I might be more inclined to support this pronouncement if it were a real person rather than a pointy-headed bureaucrat making it. In fact, the global shadow government known as the "environmental movement" has launched a major campaign to demonize this admittedly dubious product. One sure sign: trendy restaurants in Californai are ostentatiously serving up tap water to their guests.
It's a win/win: the bottled water scammers take it in the shorts and it keeps the eco-wackies away from nuke plants and sonar ranges.
Posted by:Atomic Conspiracy

#16  Compare wid COASTTOCOASTAM > Dr. LEONARD SAX - THE FUTURE OF [CHILD] MEN. More and more, males are being taught by society to be "more like girls", and are increasingly find solace and recreation in VR SEX, NOT VV REAL SEX = RELATIONSHIPS WID WOMEN. BOTTLED WATER > leading to decline in MALE SEXUAL POTENCY/PRODUCTIVITY.

IOW, FUTURAMA > DON'T DATE ROBOTS, DON'T GET IMMORAL, SICK "METAL FEVER/LUSTS"!
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2008-02-17 21:14  

#15  I have a reverse osmosis unit to give me running ("basically distilled") water for coffeemaker, cooking and drinking. Nothing really wrong with our water but the coffee maker doesn't get deposits and lasts forever this way.
Posted by: 3dc   2008-02-17 15:52  

#14  excellent point, Phil B
Posted by: Frank G   2008-02-17 14:39  

#13  Is bottled water allowed under sharia? This is the level of theological discussion in today's Britain.
Posted by: regular joe   2008-02-17 14:34  

#12  Drinking bottled water is immoral, but not for the reason given.

In large parts of the world, many millions of poor people are faced with the choice with buying water that doesn't make them sick or buying food. They choose safe water over food, because it is better to be hungry than sick.

Contaminated water is the number 1 killer of children worldwide. I can only imagine being a parent giving my child water that will make them sick or kill them because I don't have bottled water to give them.

Contaminated water kills more people in one day than global warming will in a century.

What is immoral is the delegates at the Bali climate conference drinking vast quantities of bottled water, surrounded by millions of poor people whose tap or well water will likely kill them.

And these clueless f@@kwits think bottled water is about their lifestyle choices. Comment not directed against anyone here.
Posted by: phil_b   2008-02-17 14:22  

#11  As a geology student, I'm in the field alot so water is always a concern, but instead of buying bottled water, I have some 1 L nalgene bottles I take along. They're easy enough to clean and I fill them with filtered water from my house, so it's quite cheap compared to buying bottled water.
Posted by: Silentbrick   2008-02-17 14:11  

#10  San Diego's water is mostly Colorado River, and while safe, has a distasteful amount of salts and minerals. I drink bottled or filtered. Best water I ever tasted is at Lake Tahoe - better than any bottled. Like Crystal Geyser bottled (from Olancha alongside highway 395 in the Owens Valley)
Posted by: Frank G   2008-02-17 14:02  

#9  I happen to think that bottled water is an expensive fad in certain regions BUT: If you lived or passed through Coalinga, CA you wouldn't do without bottled or processed water. Their water is really nasty stuff. And it is my understanding that good water is at a premium in Europe as well.

Thankfully I live in Idaho where the biggest concern is mineral content and it doesn't taste like you are downstream from a poorly run oil refinery.
Posted by: Throger Thains8048   2008-02-17 13:57  

#8  Concur 'moose. I think buying bottled water is a waste of cash so I don't buy it anymore, unless the fam & I are taking a car trip - then it makes good sense to have it for road trips as we have a dog to or some in storage like LOTP said.. Both times in Iraq that was the only kind of h2o I drank - no potable tap water. In conus I think it's dumb to waste $$$ on bottled water as a daily thing, but that's just IMO.
Posted by: Broadhead6   2008-02-17 11:03  

#7  When he heard that 'bottled water is immoral' crap, a wit remarked, "It depends what you do with the bottle."
Posted by: Anonymoose   2008-02-17 10:54  

#6  Good warning, Excalibur. We have a routine for that sort of thing, since we also store emergency water supplies for occasions when our well pump might lose power.
Posted by: lotp   2008-02-17 10:12  

#5  By all means refill water bottles but only if you do not drink from them directly. They are very difficult to wash properly and make a great vector for all sorts of nasty bacteria.
Posted by: Excalibur   2008-02-17 09:35  

#4  The New Puritans(tm) - the new secular religion substitute to sale you guilt and obedience. Resistance is futile.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2008-02-17 09:23  

#3  You can pry my bottle of Poland Springs from my cold dead hands.
Posted by: doc   2008-02-17 09:15  

#2  Bottles of 12-16 oz with screw caps are convenient ways to have water at one's desk, in the car etc.

The big issue with bottled water (besides the fuel to ship it) is how many people just toss the bottle away and buy another. These end up (maybe) in a huge pile at the recycling center or (more often) in mountains of garbage, where they will last approximately as long as the Rockies.

At Chez Lotp we do use bottled water when we're out and about, but in most cases we keep the empties and refill from tap or filtered water as needed.

Plus, bottles of frozen water make good crate coolers for dogs on long trips in the summer time. ;-)
Posted by: lotp   2008-02-17 09:10  

#1  Anywhere there is no tap, water in some kind of a container is sort of a necessity. We shipped a bazillion pallets of the stuff to Kuwait before the first and second Iraq wars. I'd assume a man on the ground in a hot, thirsty place doesn't give a damn how much CO2 was involved. Dying of dehydration is just unfashionable...
Posted by: M. Murcek   2008-02-17 08:47  

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