help Ban bottled water from ALL National Parks!!

[handmade34]

A short list of things Republicans would like to do with our National Parks: open them up to oil and gas drilling and maybe mining; sell off what we can — National Forests, Wildlife Refugees and Wildernesses — to the highest bidder; and, since we can’t get rid of the ones we already have, make it so that there are No more National Parks, at all, in the future. Oh, and bring back the plastic water bottles.

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/21/house_republicans_want_to_prohibit_national_parks_from_banning_plastic_water_bottles/

By going bottled water free, Zion National Park reduced its annual waste by 5,000 pounds.
30% of the Grand Canyon National Park’s recycling waste came from disposable bottles before going bottled water free.
20 billion barrels of oil go into making all the water bottles Americans throw out annually creating 25 million tons of greenhouse gases.
How can you help?
Join us and our friends at Corporate Accountability International in calling on the National Park Service director Jon Jarvis to make national parks bottled water free. Add your name and information to our petition and we’ll deliver your signature!

http://act.stopcorporateabuse.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=15551

https://www.stopcorporateabuse.org

[longship]

1. Bottled water is an outright scam.

It should be outright banned.

Nestlé and the fizzy soda makers should be dragged into the dock for ripping off people for something they can get for basically free, out of the tap. Regardless, every time I go to the local grocers I see idiots with carts full of bottled water when in our area the water is wonderful.

Meanwhile the bottled water marketers deplete the aquifers.

[handmade34]

2. yup

[Jim Lane]

3. That depends on where you live.

I happily drank tap water for 30 years. Then I moved to a place where the tap water tastes bad, and now most of what I drink is bottled water.

Have you ever had the tap water in Las Vegas? It's the worst I've ever tasted. Lake Mead is where where Vegas gets its drinking water AND where it dumps its sewage. Even if you assume that the treatment process eliminates any health issues, it still tastes terrible.

[longship]

4. Nevertheless, bottled water is an outright scam.

Most people do not live in Las Vegas where, in the midst of a desert, numerous fountains evaporatively spew water into the air to promote gambling.

Of course, one could ask taxes on gambling profits to be used for clean water.

But one supposes it is better to promote the bottled water ripoff while supporting the gambling ripoff. Especially when one can have pretty fountains.

I apologize for my snarky response, but I do not think your argument is convincing.

My regards.

[Jim Lane]

5. My argument is not based solely on Las Vegas.

There are many communities -- such as Jersey City, where I live now -- where the tap water just doesn't taste very good. I'm prepared to credit the city bureaucrats with making it safe to drink. There's probably little or nothing they can do about the taste, though.

That Las Vegas wastes a lot of water is undeniable. I think the water in the fountains is recycled but you're right that there's still quite a bit of unnecessary loss through evaporation. While blaming the casino magnates, though, don't forget to add in all the individual homeowners who want bright green grassy lawns. They're adhering to an aesthetic standard that developed back East (and probably before that in England). The grass and the bushes and the flower beds guzzle water at a rate that's quite inappropriate for the midst of a desert.

Nevertheless, this is unrelated to the issue of bottled water. The real problem of Vegas water wastage is that it will take the water that's needed for legitimate uses elsewhere. As one author wrote, "In the American West, water flows uphill to money." Regardless of what you and I think, Vegas will get its water for fountains and lawns. Visitors or residents who buy and drink bottled water, for reasons of taste, will very slightly reduce the strain on the municipal water system. The effect isn't significant but at least we aren't adding to the problem.

ETA: I realize that this has drifted from the thread topic. I'm going to continue to buy and drink bottled water but I'm not in a national park. If field experience is that selling bottled water in the park results in a certain percentage of the bottles becoming litter, that's a legitimate reason to end such sales. I'm willing to drink less palatable water to preserve the aesthetics and ecology of a park I'm visiting.

[longship]

6. Then lobby your government for better water!

I grew up in Detroit. Even in the late 70's when Detroit's collapse began, the water was delish, straight out of the very polluted Detroit River (which ran into Lake Erie).

And ask any New Yorker about their water. It also is yummy.

So having foul water in your community is a fucking lousy argument for excusing the marketing of something everywhere which is totally unnecessary except for in rare places.

I will stand by my posts.

My regards.

[Jim Lane]

7. Did you catch the part where I said I live in New Jersey?

Christie is pushing to ease the protection of the Highlands, an area critical to our water supply. Merely preserving the status quo will be a victory.

You're absolutely right about the quality of NYC water. That may be my problem. I lived there for 30 years and I got spoiled.

What's ironic to me is that, at one of the Manhattan sites that I commute in to work at, they turned off their water fountain and now offer instead a dispenser with one of those big multi-gallon commercial containers of water. That's probably nothing more than a snobby disdain for tap water, when their tap water is among the best in the country.

[longship]

8. What is worse?

So called snobbish folks who don't like totally unnecessary ripoffs? Or those who suffer poor infrastructure and excuse it by supporting those ripoffs?

I confess that I do not blame you for your opinion. However, I live in Michigan with great water, thanks to the Great Lakes. However, I am in great danger of losing my artesian well because the aquifer is being depleted by a Nestle owned company -- a huge building -- bottling water to sell to people who absolutely do not need it.

As a poor person who lives in a very rural environment, I cannot afford to have another well drilled. My water is good -- a little mineralized, but very tasty. But what the water bottlers are doing here, to say nothing of what they are doing everywhere, is criminal.

So I cannot respectfully support your position and I stand by my posts.

My best regards.

[hunter]

9. We have hard aggressive water where we live in California.

It doesn't taste too bad but it destroys coffee makers.

We got a reverse osmosis unit, installed it ourselves, and we didn't connect the waste pipe to the drain as shown in the installation manual.

Instead it drains through an air gap to a 300 gallon pond outside , which has fish in it and a little fountain. It's long been an oasis for birds and occasional wildlife like raccoons. The dogs prefer this water over tap water in their dish, or even the reverse osmosis water we drink.

Another option might be to use the waste water to flush toilets.

These little reverse osmosis units are not efficient, dumping five or six liters of water for every liter of drinking water. I'm a science nerd, and have kept track of the chemistry. With our tap water we really don't have to change the carbon block filters or the osmosis membrane nearly so often as recommended. If you register the unit with the manufacturer, as I did, they will pester you to buy new filters every couple of months. I started buying generic filters a few years ago and eventually the notices from the manufacturer stopped. (Your own comfort using a reverse osmosis unit in unapproved ways may vary.)