August 7, 2007
Bottled Water Mad At Mayor
Apparently, the bottled water industry is ticked off at Gavin Newsom for banning bottled water at City Hall.
Many believe that what it takes to produce, distribute, and recycle water bottles is wasteful when you think about all that fine drinking water that’s there for the taking from Hetch Hetchy. Joe Doss of the International Bottled Water Association argues, “The amount of resin needed to make the bottled water containers has been reduced by about 40 percent over the past five years.” Wow. That has absolutely no impact on how many people actually recycle their bottles. Nor does it take into account the pollution it takes to distribute them. And even if the water bottles were made of starshine, unicorn sprinkles, and fairy dust, we still won’t be forking over any dough for bottled tap water, thank you very much.
By Deborah
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I agree that with good ol' Hetch Hetchy there's really no need for bottled water here in SF. When I go to other parts of the country, I find there's a considerable difference in the water.
You can find there info to write them here: http://www.bottledwater.org/public/contact%20IBWA_main.htm
if you do a "google news" daily search on gavin newsom , the amazing amount of rage the drink industry is aiming right at newsom is pretty fierce. they are not going to let this go.
So where's the praise for Gavin?
He's taking a progressive and environmentally friendly stance against corporate interests. If this were Chris Daly, SFist would be overcome with fellow progressives celebrating his vision and bravery.
I smell hypocrisy. It smells a bit like patchouli.
Here's a couple of points:
--In a blind taste test conducted by one of our local news channels, they said that when water is chilled, hetch hechy water was best in the test.
--On Penn and Teller's "Bullshit," they did a blind taste test on New Yorkers, and a high majority actually liked the city's tap water.
They also did a water experiment at a restaurant where a waiter served "exotic" waters from parts of the world, and the people said that this one tastes crisp, or better than the others.
Actually, they came from the same garden hose. I think the clip is still on youtube.
Guest 5,
I'm a native New Yorker and I have to say, NYC water is my favorite. Since I stopped drinking bottled water a month or two ago, I realized that SF water is pretty good, too. (I've just got to stop drinking it out of an ancient Arrowhead bottle that I refill twice a day.)
Guest 4,
I've got mad love for Gavin. I'm also allergic to patchhouli.
This is reminiciant of the beef industry going after Oprah.
May Gavin fare better than she did.
After my scientist friend gave me an education about PCBs, I saw the light.
May logic prevail.
Guest 6, another native NYer here. When I was growing up in the 70's and 8-0's, we were told constantly that NYC tap water was the best in the world: do you remember that? I think it wasn't just the usual rah-rah "NYC is great" hype, but there had been some sort of contest...
And since I am guilty of being delighted when Gavin missteps, let me make up for it a smidge. Gavin, good work. The earth thanks you.
So Gavin would rather I drank a bottle of soda rather than healthy H20?
Some people (yeah, me, I mean) drink water out of a bottle mostly for the convenience of carrying it around. I actually hate the taste you get with those reusable bottles. So yeah, I'd be sneaking it into City Hall in my purse or something.