There is a tremendous survival advantage to being fussy about water. There are a number of protozoa, bacteria and parasites that can potentially inhabit drinking water and people are dying every day from them.

When people in developed nations buy a plastic bottle of water the key motivations are convenience and security. The processing and containment of the water in a sealed bottle gives the perception of purity.

Advertisers do what they can to reinforce that perception. The perception flies in the face of facts. Tap water is safe to drink. An environmental working group tested water in 2004 and found that over 90% of the sources were in compliance with EPA standards. If you are not confident in your town’s water, you can request a copy of their annual water quality report. They are required by federal law to provide this to you on request.

Comparing tap water to bottled water enters apple/orange territory because they are regulated by two completely separate government agencies. The EPA keeps an eye on tap water while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is the watch dog for bottled water. I was surprised to read that it is permissible for bottled water to contain trace amounts of E. coli or fecal coliform. The EPA has zero tolerance for E. coli. I have some education in microbiology and food sciences and I have to wonder if the EPA has a different definition of nothing.(update: After posting this, someone left a comment letting me know that the FDA has finally made a substantial change *PDF in relation to coliform testing and elimination in bottled water.)

The source for many brands of bottled water is, as you may have heard, tap water. Commercial filtering of this tap water reduces impurities. Many sources of safe tap water don’t taste that great. I have sampled water with of tastes like sodium, sulfur compounds, calcium, and of course chlorine.

If you want to stop buying bottled water, but you just can’t bring yourself to drink straight from the tap, I have a few suggestions. The very first thing that you should do is to determine whether the water is in fact safe to drink. You can get the municipal report, but I would also suggest getting a sample direct from your tap for testing. There may be companies or agencies that will do this for you free of charge. If your tap water if safe to drink, the next step is to see if you can get used to the taste. I grew up on a farm in the country with delicious well water. I always had to get used to anything else when I left home. If you find it gross, try refrigerating it for an hour or more in a glass pitcher.

I use a Brita pitcher to improve the taste of the water that comes from the tap here in Tunisia. I did try it unfiltered straight from the tap and I also tried boiling it. Boiled water is not very palatable. Refrigerating it improved it marginally.

Brita water filters are not available in local stores. I picked one up in Italy this past winter. My water has a very detectable chlorine odor. The Brita reduced this quite a bit. Before we picked up the Brita, we had been drinking bottled water for a few months. The accumulation of plastic bottles was killing my soul. With the family drinking about 1.5 liters a day, we are reducing our plastic waste by 5 bottles per day with the Brita. I love my Brita, but it is plastic and it is an expense. I suggest you try to get used to your tap water first. If you have small children, be sure to test your tap water for lead. Children are much more sensitive to lead contamination than adults.

How the Brita® Pitcher Filter works

As you’ll see below, the process may sound complicated, but it’s really quite simple. All it takes to create fresher, great-tasting water are three separate filtration processes packed into every Brita® Pitcher filter.

• A sieve and bottom filter mesh screen out larger particulate matter from the water
• Activated carbon granules act like a sponge, sucking up Chlorine (taste and odor)
• An Ion Exchange Resin acts like a magnet to attract and hold the impurities Copper, Mercury, Cadmium and Zinc, at the molecular level

How the Brita® Faucet Filter works

• An added layer around the filter traps large particulate matter from the water
• Activated powdered carbon acts like a sponge, sucking up Chlorine (taste and odor and Benzene)
• A zeolite acts like a magnet attracting Lead

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Here is a screencap of a new Twitter account supposedly held by Phil Rozenski, director of environmental strategies at the plastic bag maker Hilex Poly Co.:

I was a bit confused by the ‘retweet’ I got so I went to check out the tweeter. A retweet is usually someone repeating what you said to share it with a wider audience. Phil had zero followers and I never wrote the sentence that he put after RT @plasticless.

If he had cared to read my blog he would have seen that I spent a whole weekend writing a series of posts that closely examined the arguments made by the plastic bag industry.

The accusation that I was being a drama queen was interesting. My quip that there was a 50% chance of finding a plastic bag in my front yard apparently touched a nerve. Again, if he was acquainted with the level of commerce and the wind direction and velocity on my street, he might not think I was being dramatic.

Welcome to Twitter, sir.

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It is hard to predict who with preside over the actual bailout of the Big Three. If things move quickly, an oil industry insider with little to lose in the way of credibility will sign the thing. If there is a protracted debate, an idealistic newcomer with everything to lose in the way of credibility will sign the thing.

I would like to see some conservation based conditions attached to any handout given to the auto industry. If they are sincerely begging for money, why not force them to do a 180 degree turn with regard to what they are doing as an industry. If they can provide a product that is better for the environment than any imports, the government could justify some hefty trade barriers in order to further help the industry.

Why not demand that they stop building and promoting big SUVs?

Why not demand that they stop participating in auto racing?

Why not demand that they make more durable cars? Designing cars to last just long enough for the average consumer to pay for them probably makes some economic sense now. If manufacturers had to accept all the used up cars and deal with them in an environmentally responsible way, they would probably rethink design and materials quite a bit.

Why not demand that they cooperate to create one industry standard powertrain for compact commuter vehicles? This would be like open source for cars. This would spur entrepreneurs to to create aftermarket improvements because of the enormous potential for sales.

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Cork is mostly produced in Portugal and it is a sustainable industry. Wine producers turned to synthetic corks for economic reasons, but consumers (the snobby ones) don’t like them. Natural cork has regained 60% of the market.

There are some viral videos starring bad actor Rob Schneider that promote real corks as the best choice for social justice and for the environment. Trees that are being used for harvesting cork absorb more CO2 than comparable trees that are left alone. Biodiversity in cork forests is exceptional. If demand for cork diminishes, you could assume that some forests would be developed in less friendly ways.

My local table wine is stopped with cork, but it has plastic capsule. Capsules are sometimes made of tin or aluminum. They used to be made of lead and some decades old bottles may still have a lead capsule.

Metal screw caps contain some non-recyclable plastic.

If you can find a wine that suits your taste and budget that has a real cork and no plastic capsule, cheers. I could choose to buy wine from the fruit truck. It comes in reused bottles. I have been served the local home-made wine on occasion and the alcohol content is a bit over the top.

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Yes, there is a patent. Specifically, IBM holds a patent on card reading technology that stores a holders preference and displays it at cash points in stores. I personally think that having at least four words pass between a shopper and a cashier is a good thing, and we don’t need any technology to alleviate us of that onerous task.

I am given plastic bags occasionally. As often as possible, I tell the vendor that I do not want one. I have to confess that social awkwardness prevents me from doing so. I still have a small number of tasks that involve reusing plastic bags. My neighbor was happy to receive my compost for his fields and he specifically requested that it be placed in a plastic bag before being tossed over the wall.

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