The real cost of bottled water

Jared Blumenfeld, Susan Leal

Sunday, February 18, 2007

San Franciscans and other Bay Area residents enjoy some of the nation's highest quality drinking water, with pristine Sierra snowmelt from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir as our primary source. Every year, our water is tested more than 100,000 times to ensure that it meets or exceeds every standard for safe drinking water. And yet we still buy bottled water. Why?

Maybe it's because we think bottled water is cleaner and somehow better, but that's not true. The federal standards for tap water are higher than those for bottled water.

The Environmental Law Foundation has sued eight bottlers for using words such as "pure" to market water that contains bacteria, arsenic and chlorine. Bottled water is no bargain either: It costs 240 to 10,000 times more than tap water. For the price of one bottle of Evian, a San Franciscan can receive 1,000 gallons of tap water. Forty percent of bottled water should be labeled bottled tap water because that is exactly what it is. But even that doesn't dampen the demand.

Clearly, the popularity of bottled water is the result of huge marketing efforts. The global consumption of bottled water reached 41 billion gallons in 2004, up 57 percent in just five years. Even in areas where tap water is clean and safe to drink, such as in San Francisco, demand for bottled water is increasing -- producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy. So what is the real cost of bottled water?

Most of the price of a bottle of water goes for its bottling, packaging, shipping, marketing, retailing and profit. Transporting bottled water by boat, truck and train involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. More than 5 trillion gallons of bottled water is shipped internationally each year. Here in San Francisco, we can buy water from Fiji (5,455 miles away) or Norway (5,194 miles away) and many other faraway places to satisfy our demand for the chic and exotic. These are truly the Hummers of our bottled-water generation. As further proof that the bottle is worth more than the water in it, starting in 2007, the state of California will give 5 cents for recycling a small water bottle and 10 cents for a large one.

Just supplying Americans with plastic water bottles for one year consumes more than 47 million gallons of oil, enough to take 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, according to the Container Recycling Institute. In contrast, San Francisco tap water is distributed through an existing zero-carbon infrastructure: plumbing and gravity. Our water generates clean energy on its way to our tap -- powering our streetcars, fire stations, the airport and schools.

More than 1 billion plastic water bottles end up in the California's trash each year, taking up valuable landfill space, leaking toxic additives, such as phthalates, into the groundwater and taking 1,000 years to biodegrade. That means bottled water may be harming our future water supply.

The rapid growth in the bottled water industry means that water extraction is concentrated in communities where bottling plants are located. This can have a huge strain on the surrounding eco-system. Near Mount Shasta, the world's largest food company, Nestle, is proposing to extract billions of gallons of spring water, which could have devastating impacts on the McCloud River.

So it is clear that bottled water directly adds to environmental degradation, global warming and a large amount of unnecessary waste and litter. All this for a product that is often inferior to San Francisco's tap water. Luckily, there are better, less expensive alternatives:

-- In the office, use a water dispenser that taps into tap water. The only difference your company will notice is that you're saving a lot of money.

-- At home and in your car, switch to a stainless steel water bottle and use it for the rest of your life knowing that you are drinking some of the nation's best water and making the planet a better place.

---

Take the pledge

Signing on to sfenvironment.org or sfwater.org to register not to buy bottled water for a year enters your name in a drawing to win a free stainless steel water bottle.

Jared Blumenfeld is the director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment. Susan Leal is the general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/02/18/EDG56N6OA41.DTL

Message in a Bottle

Americans spent more money last year on bottled water than on ipods or movie tickets: $15 Billion. A journey into the economics--and psychology--of an unlikely business boom. And what it says about our culture of indulgence.

From: Issue 117 | July 2007 | Page 110 | By: Charles Fishman | Photographs By: Nigel Cox

...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...

For full article go here:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-message-in-a-bottle.html

NY Mandates Emission Comparison Stickers For Cars

Aug 12 2007

New York is requiring automobile manufacturers to affix “global warming index” stickers to new cars and passenger trucks beginning in the 2010 model year, Environmental News Service reports. The stickers will detail carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by operating the vehicle. California has passed similar environmental legislation effective with the 2009 model year.

The index will be based on emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride.

The requirement applies to passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks with a gross weight of 8,500 pounds or less.

Each sticker will include an index that compares the emissions of global warming gases from the vehicle with the average projected emissions from all vehicles of the same model year, and identifies the vehicle model within its class with the lowest emissions of that model year.

Ontario Proposes Green licence Plates For Low-Emission Vehicles

Aug 12 2007

By this time next year, Ontarians who buy environmentally friendly, low-emission cars and trucks would get a green-hued licence plate that entitles them to such possible perks as free parking and access to carpool lanes, The Star reports.

The so-called “eco-licence” plate is one of three green transportation policies the province is hoping will encourage commuters and businesses to factor the environment into their spending decisions. The government will consult with vehicle manufacturers and environmental groups to design a rating system that identifies the cleanest cars, light trucks and commercial vehicles.

At the same time, at least three U.S. states are considering green plates for convicted sex offenders and pedophiles back on the streets, The Star reports in another article.

GM to begin testing Volt electric car by spring

By Jui Chakravorty Thu Aug 9, 1:20 PM ET

TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan (Reuters) - General Motors Corp. will begin road testing its Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid in the spring of next year and remains on track to produce the rechargeable car by late 2010, a senior executive said on Thursday.

Ac

As the race to bring a mass-market, rechargeable electric vehicle to the market heats up, GM's global product chief Bob Lutz said he expects to have next-generation lithium-ion battery packs ready for the vehicles by October this year.

"We should have the battery packs by October," he said, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an industry conference. "We'll have some on the road for testing next spring, and we should have the Volt in production by the end of 2010."

GM is the only automaker to have provided a timeline on the production of a plug-in hybrid vehicle, even though other companies, such as Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. are working on similar technology.

Automakers have said lithium-ion battery technology remains the biggest challenge in producing a plug-in vehicle as they try to lower the cost of the batteries and increase their power and storage capacity.

The current generation of lithium-ion batteries, used in devices such as laptop computers and electronic devices, also has a tendency to overheat.

The Volt would be outfitted with new lithium-ion battery packs, which hold a charge longer than the nickel metal hydride batteries now used widely in automobiles.

"The cost of the battery would likely be high even at the time of production," Lutz said, adding that GM is exploring options that would allow consumers to lease the battery when buying the vehicle in order to bring down the sticker price.

Unlike earlier gasoline-electric hybrids, which run on a parallel system twinning battery power and a combustion engine, plug-in cars are designed to allow short trips powered entirely by the electric motor, using a battery that can be charged through an electric socket at home.

GM is designing the highly-anticipated Volt to run 40 miles on battery power alone, reducing or even eliminating the need for drivers to fuel up an on-board gasoline-powered engine provided as a backup power source.

Lutz said GM is requiring a 10-year life for the battery, and said the No. 1 U.S. automaker would look to price the vehicle like a "traditional mid-market car."

GM is racing rival Toyota to offer the first mass-market electric vehicle. Toyota last month unveiled a "plug-in" car based on its popular Prius hybrid model, saying it would test the fuel-saving vehicle on public roads -- a first for the industry.

But Toyota said the car, called the Toyota Plug-in HV, is not fit for commercialization because it uses low-energy nickel-metal hydride batteries instead of lithium-ion batteries, believed to be a better fit for rechargeable plug-in cars.

Environmental advocates have been pressing automakers to roll out plug-in vehicles that could be recharged at standard electric outlets as a way to reduce oil consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions.

In June, GM announced contracts with two companies -- a subsidiary of South Korea's LG Chem Ltd. called Compact Power Inc. and Germany's Continental AG to work on parallel battery development programs for the Volt.

On Thursday, GM announced another contract with A123 Systems, which has been working with Continental on battery technology.

GM said both Compact Power and A123 could end up providing the batteries for the Volt, or only one of them might meet the automaker's requirements.

Food That Travels Well

By JAMES E. McWILLIAMS

Published: August 6, 2007

Austin, Tex.

THE term “food miles” — how far food has traveled before you buy it — has entered the enlightened lexicon. Environmental groups, especially in Europe, are pushing for labels that show how far food has traveled to get to the market, and books like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” contemplate the damage wrought by trucking, shipping and flying food from distant parts of the globe.

There are many good reasons for eating local — freshness, purity, taste, community cohesion and preserving open space — but none of these benefits compares to the much-touted claim that eating local reduces fossil fuel consumption. In this respect eating local joins recycling, biking to work and driving a hybrid as a realistic way that we can, as individuals, shrink our carbon footprint and be good stewards of the environment.

On its face, the connection between lowering food miles and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions is a no-brainer. In Iowa, the typical carrot has traveled 1,600 miles from California, a potato 1,200 miles from Idaho and a chuck roast 600 miles from Colorado. Seventy-five percent of the apples sold in New York City come from the West Coast or overseas, the writer Bill McKibben says, even though the state produces far more apples than city residents consume. These examples just scratch the surface of the problem. In light of this market redundancy, the only reasonable reaction, it seems, is to count food miles the way a dieter counts calories.

But is reducing food miles necessarily good for the environment? Researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand, no doubt responding to Europe’s push for “food miles labeling,” recently published a study challenging the premise that more food miles automatically mean greater fossil fuel consumption. Other scientific studies have undertaken similar investigations. According to this peer-reviewed research, compelling evidence suggests that there is more — or less — to food miles than meets the eye.

It all depends on how you wield the carbon calculator. Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other energy-consuming aspects of production — what economists call “factor inputs and externalities” — like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.

Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.

These life-cycle measurements are causing environmentalists worldwide to rethink the logic of food miles. New Zealand’s most prominent environmental research organization, Landcare Research-Manaaki Whenua, explains that localism “is not always the most environmentally sound solution if more emissions are generated at other stages of the product life cycle than during transport.” The British government’s 2006 Food Industry Sustainability Strategy similarly seeks to consider the environmental costs “across the life cycle of the produce,” not just in transportation.

“Eat local” advocates — a passionate cohort of which I am one — are bound to interpret these findings as a threat. We shouldn’t. Not only do life cycle analyses offer genuine opportunities for environmentally efficient food production, but they also address several problems inherent in the eat-local philosophy.

Consider the most conspicuous ones: it is impossible for most of the world to feed itself a diverse and healthy diet through exclusively local food production — food will always have to travel; asking people to move to more fertile regions is sensible but alienating and unrealistic; consumers living in developed nations will, for better or worse, always demand choices beyond what the season has to offer.

Given these problems, wouldn’t it make more sense to stop obsessing over food miles and work to strengthen comparative geographical advantages? And what if we did this while streamlining transportation services according to fuel-efficient standards? Shouldn’t we create development incentives for regional nodes of food production that can provide sustainable produce for the less sustainable parts of the nation and the world as a whole? Might it be more logical to conceptualize a hub-and-spoke system of food production and distribution, with the hubs in a food system’s naturally fertile hot spots and the spokes, which travel through the arid zones, connecting them while using hybrid engines and alternative sources of energy?

As concerned consumers and environmentalists, we must be prepared to seriously entertain these questions. We must also be prepared to accept that buying local is not necessarily beneficial for the environment. As much as this claim violates one of our most sacred assumptions, life cycle assessments offer far more valuable measurements to gauge the environmental impact of eating. While there will always be good reasons to encourage the growth of sustainable local food systems, we must also allow them to develop in tandem with what could be their equally sustainable global counterparts. We must accept the fact, in short, that distance is not the enemy of awareness.

James E. McWilliams is the author of “A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America” and a contributing writer for The Texas Observer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/opinion/06mcwilliams.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1186419637-Es+7EGP9oO09f7b3I98l7w

Second Rotation: Get Cash for Your Old Electronics

by Collin Dunn, Seattle on 08. 3.07

Science & Technology

E-waste is a huge problem facing our increasingly plugged-in world, and though Staples is trying to stem the tide, there are still tons of electronics that needlessly go in the landfill. A new company called Second Rotation is adding a new option for your old consumer electronics, and it can help you make a little cash. Last week, they launched their "online exchange dedicated to giving individual consumers an easy way to sell pre-owned lifestyle goods on the Web." Their initial focus is on the ubiquitous consumer electronics -- cell phones, iPods, digital cameras, PDAs, etc. -- and are attempting to streamline the service offered by other sites like eBay to make it easier for individuals to get rid of their stuff. Offering cash for them is a good incentive for folks to keep their used (but still working) electronics from going in the trash when the newest gotta-have-it hits stores. Their "dynamic pricing calculator" helps determine, almost in real time, the value of whatever you want to unload; 10 days or so after you send it to Second Rotation, you'll have cash money burning a hole in your pocket. When added to services like those available at Freecycle and Craigslist, there's really no reason you have to throw away anything with even a little life in it. ::Second Rotation via ::Core77