Water & Air – Filter Systems News

IMAGE CREDIT: oliveventures.com

On April 22, 2013 the world will celebrate Earth Day, an annual day in which various events are held around the world to show support for environmental protection. One of the best ways you can protect the environment is by going reusable. Many have switched to using reusable bags and more, but what about making the switch to reusable water bottles? I may be preaching to the choir, but there are serious disadvantages to drinking bottled water. Reusable water bottles are more environmentally friendly and save you the long-term cost of paying extra money for plastic water bottles. There are three main reasons for you to start (or continue) using reusable water bottles.

Reduce waste: Did you know that the materials used to package bottled water takes hundreds of years to bio-degrade? It is believed that more than 80% of all plastic water bottles are simply thrown away and becomes litter. An estimated 2 million tons of discarded water bottles clog our nation’s landfills.

Save Money: The above graphic says it all when it comes to saving money. We pay much more for bottled water than we do for tap water. You are paying around 5 cents an ounce (when you consider the price per ounces in the average plastic water bottle) versus about a cent per gallon for tap water. Regardless of claims, the regulations surrounding plastic water bottles are less stringent than the regulations surrounding your local water supplier. The US public water system is monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which requires numerous daily tests for toxins and bacteria.

Be Healthier: Many plastic water bottles contain BPA (Bisphenol A) which studies have shown to be harmful to your health. It has been connected to cancer and hormonal issues. By switching to a reusable BPA-free water bottle, such as the Klean Kanteen water bottle, you are keeping your body protected from the harmful effects of BPA.

Many do not drink tap water because they question its safety or don’t like its taste. While these are concerns are understandable, there are solutions to this problem.

If you are weary about the taste or smell of tap water, carbon filters are the way to go. By reducing harmful bacteria and odors, you are left with filtered water that is free of smells, bad taste and chlorine. By installing a carbon filter inside your home (or even replacing your refrigerator water filter) you are reducing the amount of possible contaminates in your water supply and reducing bad taste and odor as well.

Reliable construction. Great fit for your house!

So are you ready to make the switch? If so, we suggest the Klean Kanteen Stainless Steel water bottle. Made from BPA free, food-grade stainless steel, this is an ideal alternative to bottled water. One of the best features of the Klean Kanteen bottles is found in its construction. These stainless water bottles will not impart or retain any odors or flavors. Unlike many plastic water bottles, the Klean Kanteen will not leech harmful chemicals into your drink. This water bottle is 100% recyclable, dishwasher safe, and is available in many sizes such as a 27 oz. capacity (pictured).

If you have already made the switch to reusable water bottles, congratulations! Urge your friends to do the same and drop the bottle! We offer a wide selection of reusable water bottles such as Vapur water bottles, and Brita water bottles. Browse through and choose which you prefer. In honor of Earth Day, let’s make an effort to go reusable! What is your favorite reusable water bottle? Don’t be shy and let us know in the comments below.

Thinking of going camping this fall season? Across the country the leaves have changed and there are a multitude of beautiful colors to be seen.  The cool, crisp air means less bugs and clear night skies full of stars. If you, like me, are not THRILLED at the prospect of sleeping outside and not having clean fresh water to drink, the following products will save the day.

Katadyn MyBottle Water Purifier- Blue Splash

This sleek and stylish Katadyn water bottle does more than simply hold water. This water bottle features a personal filtration system directly inside the bottle. The built in virustat and cyst filter will remove bacteria, viruses, cysts and other impurities from virtually all fresh water sources. In addition, the carbon cartridge removes chemicals, making your water taste better. The MyBottle is even registered with the United States Environmental Protection Agency for its efficiency at removing impurities.

Use the Katadyn MyBottle to filter the following water sources:

1)      Lakes

2)      Ponds

3)      Rivers

4)      Streams

Katadyn Mini Ultralight Series Microfilter- Black

                The Katadyn Mini Ultralight Microfilter is ideal for camping and hiking. This filter removes protozoa, cysts, sediment, dirt, viruses, spores dirt and bacteria down to 0.2 microns in size. This microfilter has a 2,000 gallon capacity before needing a filter replacement. Weighing less than a pound, this easy to carry filtration system is great when you do not have a readily available fresh water source.

Klean Kanteen 18 oz Bottle & Loop Cap- Red

    The Kleen Kanteen 18 oz Bottle is BPA free and is manufactured out of the highest quality stainless steel. This is an eco friendly alternative to bringing a 24 pack of bottled water to your next camping trip. The convenient loop cap makes it easy to attach to backpacks and camping equipment.  This water bottle comes in a variety of colors.

 Nite Ize Carbiner, Klean Kanteen S-Biner # 3

         The Kleen Kanteen Carbiner will make it easy for you and your family to attach your Kleen Kanteen water bottle to belts, backpacks and camping equipment. Manufactured out of the same stainless steel as your Kleen Kanteen water bottle, two snaps is all it takes to bring your bottle everywhere you need it to go.

Vapur Anti Bottle Water Bottle- Pink 16 oz.

Perfect for the little campers in your party,  this reusable water bottle  features a space saving design. They are extremely flexible and almost completely collapsible, making this water bottle ideal when you are tight on space. The matching clip on the water bottle makes it easy to clip onto hiking bags and camping equipment. This water bottle is made out of BPA free plastic and holds 16 ounces.

With these easy to use products, you can be sure that your next camping and hiking trip will be a great success!

The drinking water fountain has been around for centuries, but two different men invented the modern drinking fountain in the early 1900’s: Halsey Willard Taylor, and Luther Haws. Each man founded a company that produced drinking fountains. Taylor founded the Halsey Taylor Company, and Haws the Haws Sanitary Drinking Faucet Co. The way that water is served in public places was changed by Taylor and Haws.

Halsey Taylor developed his drinking fountain in part because his father had died from typhoid fever caused by water that was contaminated. Luther Haws worked both as a part-time plumber and as a sanitary inspector in Berkeley, Calif. One day at a public school he was inspecting he saw children drinking water from a tin cup tied to a faucet. Both men shared fears about the health risks associated with public drinking water. Water fountains developed by both men are still widely in use around the world.

In a couple of earlier blogs we mentioned two ongoing efforts to map U.S. water fountains, both smartphone apps: Thermos‘ Oasis Places, and WeTap, started by The Pacific Institute and Google. WeTap’s current map shows that this effort has spread across the U.S. from its origins in Berkeley, Calif. and the Bay Area. Dr. Peter Gleick, President of The Pacific Institute, maintains that the declining availability of drinking fountains has led to the rise of bottled water sales: “one of the reasons for the explosive growth in the sales of bottled water in the past two decades (the average American now drinks nearly 30 gallons of commercial bottled water per year, up from 1 gallon in 1980), is the disappearance of public drinking water fountains.”

Today, many feel that the drinking water fountain may be going the way of the telephone booth. Concerns about the sanitation and safety of drinking water fountains may be fueling their loss, in addition to boosting bottled water’s popularity. But bottled water has been shown to be dangerous to the environment and user, as well as being prohibitively expensive. An attractive alternative are hydration stations, machines that deliver filtered water, which are being installed in many schools and offices. In addition to the water offered by hydration stations often being purer and safer than drinking water fountains and bottled water, they help eliminate single use plastic bottles. Hydration stations are especially popular on college campuses, where activist students have been making others aware of the disadvantages of bottled water, and raising awareness about the safety of schools’ drinking water fountains. Maybe hydration stations will eventually supplant water fountains and even bottled water as the source of choice for drinking water.

“Many civilizations have been crippled or destroyed by an inability to understand water or manage it. We have a huge advantage over the generations of people who have come before us, because we can understand water and we can use it smartly.”

– Charles Fishman, The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water

Charles Fishman, bestselling author of The Wal-Mart Effect has most recently turned his attention to water. The leap from discounted mega-giant to Earth’s most essential resource may seem like a big one, but Fishman is interested in relationships-whether it’s to Wal-Mart or water.  Fishman first began his flirtation with water in a 2007 article entitled, “Message in a Bottle”, published in Fast Company magazine. In this piece Fishman lamented, “Thirty years ago, bottled water barely existed as a business in the United States. Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets– $15 billion. It will be $16 billion this year” (Fishman, 2007).

Fast forward to 2011, and Fishman tackles both the history and future of water in our world. The Big Thirst seeks to open people’s eyes to the reality of water in the twenty-first century. Similar to what the book and film, Fast Food Nation did for revealing the atrocities of the United States fast food industry, Thirst delves into people’s water consciousness. For example, do you know where your water goes when it swirls down the drain, flushes down the toilet or leaves your washing machine? A majority of Americans have no idea.

Also consider that most Americans don’t know where the majority of their daily water usage comes from. Do you? In 1999, a group of researchers used electronic water-flow sensors in 1,888 homes for four weeks. The results showed that the primary way American’s use water daily is by flushing the toilet. About five times a day per person if you want to put a figure on it. We literally flush 5.7 billion gallons of water down the toilet a day (Fishman, 2011).

The Big Thirst’s strength stems from Fishman’s ability to storytell. He connects you to your relationship with water in a multitude of ways. Take for example, this excerpt, “Like so much of modern life, safe, reliable water and sewer service is both essential and a complete mystery. We have no idea where our water comes from, we have no idea what happens to it when the dishwasher is done with it. We have no idea what effort is required to get the water to us, and no idea what’s required to get rid of it. That ignorance doesn’t matter, until things start to go wrong.”

Water is an essential resource in our daily lives- and most of us do not understand how much we rely on it, how much goes into getting it to our faucet, and what we would do if it were to stop flowing freely. Charles Fishman explores these questions through fascinating stories intertwining his personal travels to the water bottling plants of San Pellegrino, Italy and Poland Spring, Maine.  The main question being, why don’t we value our most essential resource the way we should?

Is Australian chef Mark Best justified in charging for tap water at Marque Restaurant, his restaurant in Syndey, Australia?

Best stopped selling “boutique bottled water” and instead offered customers treated tap water for about half the price of the bottled water he previously sold, according to a Reuters article. He did so because he considers these bottled waters to be wasteful and wanted to provide an eco-friendly alternative.

Best installed a water filter system that filters, chills and carbonates the Marque Restaurant‘s tap water. And while he could have raised his pricing across his menu to make up the cost, he wanted everyone to know they were being charged for tap water. He charges the equivalent of $5.31 in US dollars for all the tap water a patron cares to drink. The 500 ml bottles of boutique bottled water that he sold in the past cost twice that much.

“I’m not highly political but I want to make people aware and this is just one initiative,” Best said.

While many patrons were unhappy about it, charging for tap water is not illegal if it has been treated — and Best’s $6,000 Italian-made water filtration system certainly does that.

If Best’s main goal in charging for tap water was to make a statement and “raise awareness of the need for restaurants to be socially responsible and reduce plastic waste,” we would say he succeeded. What do you think: is Best justified in charging for tap water or not?

It can get pretty hot in Afghanistan and Iraq during the summer months. 120 degrees Fahrenheit hot. And for the nearly 200,000 US troops stationed in the Middle East, staying hydrated is a real challenge, but what can be even more grueling is finding clean water.

That’s why GLOBAL Integrated Security, a defense and national security organization, has developed the Tactical Water Purification System (TWPS) for the US Army’s TACOM Life Cycle Command program, which helps sustain the troops stationed in environmentally challening locations.

The TWPS maintains “state-of-the art micro-filtration technology to filter out silt and biological materials and includes advanced high-salt rejection and reverse osmosis technology to produce drinking water from the most extreme water sources in the world.” TWPS provides troops “over 1500 gallons of potable water per hour from freshwater sources and over 1200 gallons from sea or saltwater sources.” Depending on the environment, the TWPS unit can sustain between 1,000-1,5000 troops per day. TWPS trucks have also proven useful in disaster relief as providing clean water to survivors is a crucial and immediate need.

Providing clean water for troops is one of the most basic requirements for any military. Since World War I the military has learned how contaminated drinking water can affect the health of soldiers in the field. Clean water not only benefits those who drink it, but for those who bathe, cook, and wash laundry. Today, certain locations are hindered by local water being contaminated by raw sewage or disease. Not to mention water bottles have become tools for destruction as certain insurgents have used plastic water bottle to rig IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and attack convoy trucks.

The Tactical Water Purification System is a huge step toward keeping soldiers self-sufficient and mobile. With consistent access to clean and purified water, soldiers are no longer bound to one location simply for the sake of hydration or rely on outside support. And with the TWPS’ reverse osmosis system and purification techniques, this unit has many advantages over traditional water bottles which can be a costly expense.

New Jersey American Water recently announced the winners of its “Tap For Tap” contest, in which New Jersey K-8 students wrote and performed original songs proclaiming the greatness of tap water. The entries in the contest were judged by how well the song lyrics and dance routien extolled the benefits of tap water.

You can see these videos and more at New Jersey American Water’s Youtube Channel.

Conover Primary School

The students at Conover Primary School choreographed a dance routine that allowed the whole class to participate, with individual students coming up to deliver their own lyrics in between the chorus of “Tap water — T.A.P.!”.

Madison Elementary

The students at Madison Elementary rapped about how “Water to drink, drink, drink, helps the brain think, think, think.”

Jefferson School

The fifth-graders at Jefferson School sang “Tap water is good for your body, tap water gives me energy, tap water is good for your body, so drink some tap water for me” to the tune of “My bonnie lies over the ocean.”

As you may recall, in April of last year, the town of Concord, Massachusetts banned the sale of bottled water, making international headlines as the first town in the United States, and maybe even the world, to do so. The ban was set to go into effect in January of this year. However, voters at the annual town meeting, this week, rejected the ban, passing instead a proposal that would educate citizens about bottled water’s environmental impacts. It’s interesting that the vote took place at the beginning of this year’s National Drinking Water Week.

The most probable reason for the ban’s rejection was the citizens’ right to choose bottled water over tap, which is not surprising, considering that Concord is known for being the host of the first battle of the American Revolution. Ironically, however, the voter turnout was very small. Out of the town’s 17,000 citizens, only 537 residents showed up to vote on the issue, which is evidence of the town’s apathy toward both environmentalism and liberty.

Either way, 83-year-old Jean Hill is not giving up. She filed the petition to ban last year, and claims that she’ll be back next year, as well.

By now, it’s clear that we at Filters Fast prefer filtered tap water over bottled water. However, we are also not convinced that an all-out ban is the ultimate solution. In general, most people want to protect their freedom to choose. We have written about the issue of banning bottled water in universities, and this is one of the major reasons why many schools have voted against a ban. What do you think? Should towns and cities ban the sale of bottled water?

The Australian Standard for organic products says that natural products like water cannot be labeled “organic.” But what if that label is part of the brand or company name?

Australian brands, Organic Springs, Active Organic, and Organic Falls sell purified tap water under the Active Organic Spring name, though the water is not organic and is not sourced from a spring. Legitimate organic producers are annoyed at companies that use the term in their brand names, as it can mislead consumers. “Organic” is a term that is typically used to describe agricultural produce, and not natural substances like water or air.

The company, in its defense, states that it is not actually claiming that the water is organic, though the term is used in the brand name. Still – the word can be misleading to consumers, no matter the context. The bottled water industry caught on to the power of this kind of advertising long ago when they began marketing their product with pictures of glaciers, mountains and freshwater springs on the bottles. These days, many consumers will blindly purchase a product labeled “organic”, simply because the word has such a powerful, positive connotation, even if they don’t know what the term itself really means. And some products labeled “organic” are not any healthier or better-tasting than their non-organic versions.

What do you think? If given the choice between a bottle simply labeled “purified tap water” and a bottle labeled “purified tap water” with “organic” in the brand name, which would you be more likely to choose?

Pura Vida H2O has come out with what it hopes will become the “ATM Machine of Bottled Water”, but without the bottle. The concept is similar to that of EcoWell, a filtered water “vending machine” which we wrote about last year. Basically, anyone wanting water on the go can bring their own reusable bottle and refill it with purified tap water from one of Pura Vida’s filtered water dispensers, for 50 cents – a fraction of what it costs to buy plastic bottled water, and 5 cents less than what EcoWell charges. 450 machines are expected to be up-and-running around the country by mid-summer, and some of them will sell reusable water bottles for $10 to accommodate empty-handed, thirsty patrons.

Pros?

At first glance this sounds like the perfect innovative solution to the problem of plastic bottle waste. The average person saves about $2,100, along with over 1,400 plastic bottles a year by taking advantage of these filtered water dispensers. Simply bring your own reusable water bottle from home, and you’ve got the convenience of bottled water, without the environmental waste.

Cons?

50 cents is a fraction of the cost of your average bottle of water, but it is a LARGE fraction, considering that tap water is regularly tested and costs only half a cent per glass. And if you upgrade from the 16-oz size to the 24-oz size, you’re paying 75 cents instead of 50. While that is about half the cost of a bottle of water, with the added benefit of saving the environment, many people might question the idea of paying that much for water, period, filtered or not. Especially when you can buy a Filtrete Water Station, (a.k.a 4 bottle water filter) which will refill 4 reusable bottles at once, with filtered tap water right from your kitchen sink. These bottles can be stored in your refrigerator, and taken on-the-go, just as easily as a Klean Kanteen, and the cost for water is not nearly as much. The “ATM Machine” concept is also a little unsettling, since ATM’s are typically associated with unreasonable, annoying charges and usage fees.

What do you guys think? Is the Pura Vida concept a good idea? Is 50 cents worth the convenience of filtered water on-the-go? Or would you rather use a Filtrete Water Station and do it yourself for much less?