Bottled water - pollution source

I'm guilty of buying bottled water from time to time if only to quench my thirst while driving. As for the home, I use tap water from our store as my home well water is just awful. I'm using the home tap water only for cooking and bathing. The store tap water is for drinking and coffee(it makes a difference, IMHO).

As for the cave man, well they didn't have the ducats to buy any bottled water. -----Willy

... water brands is that they are nothing but tap water. I believe it is Desani which is bottled by Coca-cola that uses straight from the tap municipal water from many large cities. They filter it, and add a few minerals and send it straight to our stores.

That had on their menu, bottled water. It was bottled, alright, but they were already opened before they got to the guests. What happened was they were just using tap water. Some patrons got suspicious, and the jig was up.

to cause the product to decompose. Those include high heat, micro-organisms, and high moisture. These come from somewhere and pose their own questions. Compost piles produce their own heat which accelerates decomposition. It sounds as if these bottles need an external source to properly break down. Where will that come from? Are the micro-organisms naturally occurring and safe? That's not answered. And the moisture? How much? And it's made from corn. What or who would otherwise be eating or using the corn if it wasn't being made into bottles?

I'm not automatically downplaying the idea. It comes off as being reasonable. But, for one thing to get clean, another must get dirty. We need to be aware of that as well.

what is breaking down, the corn or the plastic? Will that just make lots of "what we can't see" but is still bits of plastic?

I'm assuming the plastic is completely broke down but that fact is never made clear in this advert.

Another thing that comes to mind is do these bottles have a shelf life? Filled with water, will the bottle sit on a shelf for years or will the water itself cause a break down, even without bacteria involved?

several years ago there were trashbags made with cornstarch and labeled as "biodegradable", but, all you ended up with was little bits, not actually degrading

the used bottles are not made to be reused

... need to be done to make the bottle reusable. I see warnings periodically on the web, at yahoo and other places, not to reuse water bottles but they don't mention the reason why. Obviously, it is simply because most folk are too oblivious to the fact they need to wash the darn things. My grand dad knew a local RC Cola bottler back in the 60's I delighted in going through this fellow's plant where the returnable bottles went along clinking conveyor belt, through cleaning baths and steam baths and then on to be refilled and capped - Makes me also think of the fingers I could have lost there . Obviously you can't steam clean a plastic bottle... but a water bath with a few drops of clorox would do the trick.


This also made me think of how people wash their dishes at home. Back in my college days I worked in restaurants to make ends meet. I often washed dishes and what didn't go through the automatic wash ended up in a sink waiting to be cleaned. A three tub sink was employed. One side had soapy water. One had a clorox bath. One was clean rinse water. I think we used less water than many people use at home just because I have seen folks at home turn on the spigot for rinsing and leave it on for extended amounts of time.

This made me curious. How many folk here try to be conscious of how much water they use for washing dishes, washing clothes, cars, the dog, etc?

grim

I can do a days worth of dishes with just 1 sink full of water.

as I mentioned previously would be biodegradable.

Only thing is, I'm not all that sure if there are enough feathers for that much plastic.