great post, Leslie, I agree completely. wonder what it would take to do a statewide ban? I'd love to see Portland move forward on this and have had my own personal bottled water ban for years. good reasoning, thanks.

Sorry to go OT, but this just came up at WW:

[Off-topic comment removed. Really, you couldn't find a Smith '08 topic to post this on? -editor.]

The most energy used for bottled water is in the transportation of that water from the supermarket to your house when you use a car. So, while it is noble to try to ditch the bottled water habit, it is perhaps even better to aim to reduce consumption of anything that involves local driving.

We really try to avoid the bottle water habit at our home but there are some situations where it is necessary. The first is that both of our children were adopted as infants and were on formula. You need good clean water to mix formula. For our first child we had not replaced the pipes in our 1905 house. So we had no idea what the pipes were putting into the water (the water was brown first thing in the morning). I think most can agree that it was best to use bottle water for the child. Even then we bought it in large containers but it was still bottled water. For ourselves we filtered the water.

Another thing is that I keep a case in my car for "emergency" situations. We take water in reusable containers but sometimes we drink all of that. Other times we are running errands and have unexpected time to stop at a park and run around - I prefer for the family to drink water instead of buying something else. Like Karol there are a lot of public sources I won't drink from. I think the Oregonian did an article recently about a high school student who studied the cleanliness of water fountains in his school. His very gross findings got a lot of attention. People let dogs drink out of those things for gosh sakes.

This makes me think of my travels to Central America where you cannot drink the tap water unless you really want a stomach bug. A lot of people drink soda when they are out because if they have to buy a bottle of something it will not be water. (Many homes have the large bottle of drinking water delivered or they boil water before drinking it.) I would be interested in seeing some numbers that show if bottle water sales have affected soda sales. Would banning bottle water make people just reach for other beverages? I would imagine that transporting Coke would not be any better for the environment and at least water is healthier for the people drinking it.

I can't say the idea of a bottled water ban does much for me. I'm an unapologetic treehugger, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that the knee-jerk command-and-control mentality of most of my fellow enviros has become more harmful than helpful.

At first glance Portland's ban on styrofoam seems to be working OK. But that ban probably just increases the amount of paper and plastic in landfills. We need an objective ecological cost-benefit analysis to really evaluate the impacts of such policies. I'd venture to guess that banning bottled water would just result in more bottled soda and juice consumption. These products are still 90%+ water from who-knows-where and are packaged exactly the same way as bottled water.

I'd be much more inclined to support a real update to Oregon's Bottle Bill. A major expansion that would help ensure that the price of all packaged products reflect the true costs of their production and disposal (those pesky externalities). The Dems' recent tweak to the Bottle Bill was a tiny half-step towards that ideal.

I'm just brainstorming here, but how about a 25+ cent deposit on ALL packaged beverages AND foods? And how about some incentives to make sure that packaging is made from post-consumer "waste"? This would help ensure that allegedly recyclable packages are actually recyclable. I can't count the number of times I've taken my "recyclables" back to the natural foods chain I bought them from, only to find they're not accepting them.

Dang it, that all sounds kind of command-and-controlish. But it'd be nice if we could find a way to ensure that ALL the ecological costs of a product are reflected in the price, and it'd be even nicer if we could do that in such a way as to not unduly increase the power of the regulatory state.

Following your argument (bottled water is unnecessary, so make it illegal) to its logical conclusion...

Beer is also unnecessary. As are juice, all types of soda and so on. They all come from somewhere other than a tap from Bull Run.

Are you suggesting we ban all of those as well? If not, why the inconsistency? Thank you. Respectfully, Sean.

I say don't just banned bottle water...let's return to returnable (reusable not just recyclable) bottles for beverages, all of which simply taste better when not stored in plastic and aluminum. Make the deposits worth the consumers returning the bottles to the store/vender. Back in the day, cabonated drinks were bottled locally, franchised by the big name drinks, using their recipes. Why not go back to that concept? Fewer chemicals, no petrolium-based packaging. Less shipping, less fuel, air pollution, less wear and tear on the highways and roads....more locally based jobs, more tax revenue from those companies and employees. Bottled beer (et al) from elsewhere ( some of which cannot be brewed without Rocky Moutain water apparently), could be the exceptions. But tell those companies in order to market in Oregon, they must reuse their glass containers at some level, even if they were reused locally for some other drink. There are probably other product packagings that we could re-think, while we're at it.

There certainly are special circumstances justifying the accessibility to bottled water, as Sarah notes, (5th comment from top..why aren't these comments numbered?), but its role in the proliferation of a material of limited recyclability such as plastic seems to be a decidedly negative thing.

Nothing I've ever heard has led me to understand that a plastic bottle sees more than a few generations of recycling, but glass on the other hand (thanks for bringing it up MCT)can be recycled through many, many different generations, correct? I'm sorry Karol finds that Portland's water tastes funny, but I suppose this reaction isn't totally extraordinary. Nothing personal, but I think many people are just a little phobic about ordinary realities of day to day life. I suppose there is a bunch of junk in the water as a result of flowing through Portland's old water pipes into the Benson bubblers. The air has all kinds of stuff in it downtown too. So what's next? Breathing from compressed air tanks?

I'm willing to believe for the present that the bubbler water isn't going to make me sick or kill me, and, as far as I'm concerned, it tastes just fine, but then, as some will say, 'no accounting for taste', right? I've seen people let their dogs drink out of the bubblers too. So what if they or other people wrap tongues, lips and touch the metal? The water flowing over the hardware isn't recycled, it's fresh. Don't touch the metal yourself, and if you follow that practice, it doesn't seem as though it would be very likely that you could get germs or a communicable infection from the bubbler. As usual though, I didn't do my research, so maybe someone else knows better.

To add my two cents, research has discovered that plastic water bottles contain a significantly high level of DiHydrogen Monoxide which can cause death in excess amounts and is present in all dialysis patients and those undergoing cancer treatments.

As a side note, the Bus Project experimented with handing out refillable bottles during the '06 campaign cycle. It was costly, but positive. We ended up with a hybrid model making the refillable (and branded) bottles a prize for returning canvassers, and el-cheapo plastic water for everyone else. One non-profit's attempt to address the issue and we'll do better in '08.

The Legislature's anemic move on the bottle bill should help matters a bit, but the whole concept of bottled water is by-product of rampant consumerism. Gee, what did we ever do before Evian? (ya'll remember the joke about what it spells in reverse....)

Leslie, good post. I hope I didn't end up shading an actual problem that has actual solutions with too much cheesy humour.

James Mattiace

Kari, I'll argue directly with Leslie:

allowing commercial vendors to sell it at city events (AA).

Once again, a BO blogger puts forth one of those ideas that is questionable at best, but trademark PDX nuts. Note carefully here I am only addressing the AA ban, and not the SF ban which could be justified on other bases.

1) People come from far and wide to city events. Only an idiot would argue everyone could and should anticipate how much water they might need to bring with them from points distant. And why would anyone who claims to be progressive and/or health conscious, argue that people should be forced to buy any manner of alternative drinks --- which presumably still could be sold by vendors --- rather than water? (Frankly, though, BO PDXers' so frequently demonstrate they are so self-obsessed that it is not fair to assume such genuine considerations of reality or others ever enters into their mind.)

2) As another poster noted: The most energy used for bottled water is in the transportation of that water from the supermarket to your house when you use a car. Whether the "most" is true or not, transportation costs for bottled water at city events would be replaced by transportation costs for an equivalent amount of other potable fluids. And if you are dumb enough to believe somehow the city will always m make enough drinking fountains available, with all the attendent contamination problems associated with large scale public use in a short time of such facilities you are obligated to put a dollar amount and environmental cost on the secondary health care impacts. (It would costs hundreds of dollars = hundreds of bottles of water, to transport and treat just one person in the emergency room.)

3) I'd hope we can all agree that for those who get their jollies dragging refillable water bottles around, they should thoroughly clean them once a day. Can anyone cite the cost of detergent and hot water (includes transportation costs for the detergent if you are going to weasel about how transportation costs must be included in the cost of bottled water.)? Those costs all can be translated into environmental impacts and the balance between bottled water and alternatives in each specific circumstance --- like a city event --- can be calculated. Surprise, surprise, I was unable to find any such fair calculation from any advocates for such measures.

I could go on, but that's enough for now.

An OSU researcher says every year, world wide, 20-million barrels of OIL and 180 million gallons of FRESH water are used JUST to make plastic water bottle containers. And he said transportation costs only add to the environmental costs. The researcher also said about 1/4 of the bottled water Americans buy is from municipal tap water systems with chlorine removed and (maybe) some minerals added. Pepsi and Cocal Cola are heavily involved in selling bottled water. Don't like chlorine taste? The researcher said just put tap water in a jar or bottle and let it sit out overnight (no lid) and the chlorine dissipates. The researcher also admitted he's "is a municipal water fan..."

First let me point out that we have successfully narrowed the discussion to the (stupidity of the) AA ban. And what the successive posters are in a snit about is their egos being challenged not the facts. Typical whiny, useless, PDX, progressive posers.

Please note that these kinds of comments serve no purpose in any discussion other than to discourage other people from expressing their ideas.

Quite the contrary, they serve a very important purpose. Some of us think that discouraging people from expressing dumb ideas, as a resort by letting them know they have dumb ideas because they just couldn't restrain themselves, can be a very good thing for all sides. We are spared juvenile stupidity, and people with dumb ideas get a chance to learn something before embarrassing themselves by letting everybody know they have dumb ideas.

An OSU researcher says every year, world wide, 20-million barrels of OIL and 180 million gallons of FRESH water are used JUST to make plastic water bottle containers.

Thanks for providing another shining example of the dumbness that sets the truly low level of information exchange on BO. As I pointed out: Those costs all can be translated into environmental impacts and the BALANCE between bottled water and alternatives in each specific circumstance --- like a city event --- can be calculated. Surprise, surprise, I was unable to find any such fair calculation from any advocates for such measures.

And by the way: some healthy percentage of those bottles produced worldwide (your statistic) go to providing the only safe water to drink to large numbers of people in all parts of the world.

Interestingly enough, that's exactly what people used to do before the advent of bottled water. Americans used to be ingenious enough to bring something to drink with them or to search out a drinking fountain (thus the ubiquitous Benson Bubblers).

Doesn't mean it actually was the healthiest or actually the best for anyone in any sense. Particularly in mass public events where heavy use and all the health issues that come with that, and which, for the sake of people's stomachs, I won't enumerate here. In addition, PDX turns off the Benson Bubblers in the winter for several reasons that don't change even if this kind of inanity carried the day. And by the way, many folks didn't carry water or drink from water fountains, they purchased and drank the less healthy alternatives they switched away from when bottled water became available (and on the whole didn't drink enough water at all.)

Finally, I keep tap water in plastic pitcher in my fridge for drinking, and for most of my daily routine get my drinking get water from a water cooler (into my own reusable plastic cup), or a drinking fountain. Unlike you BOAN, who really just didn't quite seem to complete the transition into the real, adult world of complex and varied viewpoints and life circumstances, some of us recognize the smart thing to do is encourage people to do sensible things like what I mention when they can, and encourage them to use bottled water, for health and environmental reasons, when that make sense.

And frankly, it used to be that Portland actually had intelligent people and progressives. Too bad, too often it sure seems like the voices who insist on being heard make it seem like those days are long gone.

Hey folks, would y'all mind actually reading Leslie's post and clicking on the relevant links before just firing off a response based purely on the headline?

As the links make obvious, and she notes in a comment (for those of you who don't know that the blue text is the intertubelinky goodness) San Francisco and Ann Arbor DID NOT BAN BOTTLED WATER.

They merely stopped buying it for city workers (SF) and allowing commercial vendors to sell it at city events (AA).

If you're gonna argue with Leslie, at least argue with the argument she made -- not the argument you imagined that she made.

Kari, if that's the root of her argument, she should have said so IN HER ORIGINAL POST, not indirectly through one of a dozen or so links. The title of her piece is "Banning Bottled Water," which seems a pretty straightforward statement to me. She says nothing about a limited ban on city purchases until well into the comments. So don't get yer panties in a bunch Mr. Moderator.

Besides, the resulting discussion has been much more interesting than it would have been if she had just stated up front what she was advocating for, which is minor internal policy tweak that would affect a very small number of people.

Why don't you call OSU and speak to the researcher? Unfortunately I don't have his name as the info is on a computer where I no longer work. The Public Info folks at OSU could probably direct you to the researcher.

As for the taste of Portland's water, some folks here seem to be under the impression that we get 100% of our water from Bull Run. We don't. A significant amount of water from the South Shore Well Field is mixed in with Bull Run water, especially during the summer. This well water is not nearly as nice as Bull Run water. But any bad taste is probably more likely to be the result of old pipes rather than a bad water supply. I was told at my former work place (a prominent non-profit) to minimize the amount of water I drank there because of the bad pipes. I couldn't taste it myself, but I stopped drinking the water anyway.

I like bottled water and I'll keep drinking it regardless of what anyone on BlueOregon has to say about the subject. The BlueOregon fascists are at it again, using the power of the state to take away freedom and personal choices from people that they don't like.

I buy bottled water from time to time when I am out and about and get thirsty. I usually end up refilling the bottles several times with good ole bull run and keeping them in the fridge. Eventually, they end up in my recycling tub.

If you don't agree with abortion, don't have one.

If you don't like bottled water, don't buy it.

How about we just let people make their own choices?

I have two comments.

First, I have been involved as a board member of a "healthy communities" organization and we have spent the past couple of years trying (with some success) to get Coke and Pepsi to offer bottled water along side the usual sweet choices in their school vending machines - most of which are under contract to various Portland metro school districts. Now I guess we need to tell the kids to switch back to soda to save the planet? Seems counterproductive.

Second, I am all in favor of greater public acceptance of refillable water bottles. They work great if you want to carry a quart of cool, refreshing (and clear) vodka & tonic with you to your favorite public park, Metro bus, sports venue, or even your 10th grade civics class.

Cheers!

10th grade civics class? Are you serious? I have no idea where to start on that random act of dipstickness-

All these folks are asking is " Why do we need to bus water from gad knows where, fill up our landfills with empty plastic bottles and waste all of the time and energy when we have perfectly good water here?"

Conservative friends, didn't your mommys tell you not to be wasteful? Doesn't every possible religion tell you not to be wasteful?

BlueNote and friends- are you really saying that restricting bottled water in PDX will lead to teen alcoholism- that those who are looking for ways to stop this waste are fascists and nazis?

I hope you aren't reaching that far just because you fear losing an argument. Criminals are walking away with our Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc. but you knotheads will hold onto your water bottles and call anybody who questions this wasteful practice a nazi?

What a bunch of jokers! What a reach !

Raul, did you read the first paragraph of my post? I would be more interested in your response to that. The soda companies have the schools signed to multi-year contracts in exchange for cash payments, "free" scoreboards, stadium renovations, etc. I would rather have bottled water than bottled soda for sale in the Coke and Pepsi machines that the schools are required to have. Perhaps I am a minority of one on that issue.

In re water bottles and 10th grade civics class, I was trying to be humorous and obviously off topic - apparently without success.

Does anybody know how many family wage union jobs would be lost if Coke and Pepsi were prohibited from selling bottled water?

PS - don't call me a conservative. You can call me a communist, a socialist, a nut, a progressive, maybe a libertarian, or a Democrat, but not a conservative.

Better Red than Dead - Better Dead than Republican.

I'm glad that everyone was able to completely skip over my post without addressing it a single time.

If you don't agree with abortion, don't have one.

If you don't like bottled water, don't buy it.

How about we just let people make their own choices? And if you don't believe in car theft, don't steal anyone's car! Makes perfect sense, fool. I really wish people would take a logic class sometimes before venturing forth into the world of debate... Making bottled water illegal makes sense after we've tackled some bigger environmental issues: making cigarettes illegal making driving a car illegal making watching films illegal (projectors use TONS of power) banning the printing of books (trees are CO2 sinks)

After all of those higher priorities, then we should ban plastic water bottles. PS. By itself, Google uses approximately 20 gigawatts of power at all times, just for their servers. Shut down the internet and we'll make a HUGE dent in the carbon footprint of the world.

Who's with me!?

I agree fully on a ban of bottled water. Bottled water represents what is wrong with America, wretched excessiveness, laziness, pretentiousness and absolute selfishness. What a waste of resources all mentioned above, and how can anyone state they care about the environment if they buy bottled water. There should be NO complaining at all about gas prices by anyone who buys bottled water; it costs much more than gas. How easy is it to buy a Nalgene bottle container, have a Brita water filter/pitcher in your house to remove any chlorine taste, and to anticipate your water needs. I have never bought water, I hike and camp regularly, and never have problems. The water here is so good you can take it straight from the tap. I use my Brita filters for twice the recommended time because of the purity of the water here, and don't use it all if I plan ahead and place water in an uncovered pitcher, the chlorine works its way out. It amazes me to see the sheep buying cases of water at Costco or Trader Joes; water that is usually just filtered muni water. And don't get me started on Imported water!!

None of the comments I quoted spoke to anyone's ideas at all. They were merely more name calling on your part--one of the very stupidest forms of juvenile stupidity that exists.

doretta, in context, the comments you quoted out of context did in fact speak quite approriately and accurately to several aspects of one truly ignorant idea, and the statistics of this very thread show them to be quite representative of exactly the people it quite appropriately and accurately characterized. Your comments are yet another good example of the fundamental childishness, combined with a truly high level of intellectual dishonesty, that is one of the biggest obstacles we face in the fight for progressive governance.

Fortunately, we make most electoral progress by letting the larger voting population know just how nuts, uninformed, and obnoxious most of us consider the goofy fringe, as represented by their own comments, to be. Thanks go to you, Leslie, Kari, Jeff and some of the other commenters for providing such abundant raw material to work with.

Bottled water is expensive. It creates waste. It uses energy. These are good reasons to not drink it, but a ban seems heavy-handed. Should we not then ban soda pop, which carries the same negatives as water, but is also bad for our health? How about beer, which can lead to alcohol addiction? How about people who object to drinking chlorinated water when away from there home water filter? What if flouridation of public water becomes a mandate?

It makes more sense to require reusable containers and educate the public so they make more rational choices. Regulation is a valuable tool, but it should be used with care.

I have not seen the word "river" in any of these posts.

Many bottled water companies are in the process of locating bottling sites at the headwaters and springs that feed ecologically significant rivers. Go read Robert Glennon's Water Follies and see what the adverse effects of these operations can be on specific waterways. Or see the latest edition of High Country News.

Water has a value we have not yet begun to account for. At 89 cents for 16 plus or minus ounces at the 7-11, we are paying approximately $7.00/gallon for bottled water. Crude oil on the world spot market is around $70.00/barrel for 42 gallons - something like $1.60/gallon. So, we are paying almost four times as much for bottled water as we pay for crude and twice what we pay for gasoline.

In Oregon, and across the West, a bottler pays nothing for the water that will be bottled - nothing. It is public's water, a public resource, just like a state forest, a beach, a state park campground and all of the other public resources that benefit all of us and that we all own as members of the public. Yet there is no charge to the bottler for the resource.

We can ban or not ban bottled water, but the issues that we really ought to focus more attention on are the effects of these bottling operations on sensitive waterways, the unconscionable giveaway that occurs when we charge absolutely nothing for private use and of a very valuable public resource and the ongoing privatization of water - a public resource.

dj,

I agree that water privitazation is a serious issue, but if we are going to be alarmed that good quality water is being used to drink, we had better get very serious about population control very quickly.

The issue is really not whether we will have enough water to drink. While those who want to stockpile water rights from our rivers and aquifers may use this as an issue, we have enough water high quality to drink for a long time. Whether we should be watering our lawns, washing our cars and moving around our wastes with high quality drinking water is another question. Everything we do with water we could do with less water.

High priced bottled water is a convenience and luxury product that did not exist in the market until relatively recently. Bottled water is not and should not be considered as a source of drinking water. We should not be alarmed about using good quality water to drink. We should be alarmed about some of the myths that are used to degrade our rivers in the name of water supply and the privatization of this public resource.

Population growth and water is an issue, but the results of the interaction can be counterintuitive. Population growth need not translate into increased water demand. Seattle has grown by over 400,000 people since the mid 1970s and now uses less water than it used in 1964. According to the USGS, municipal water use declined in Oregon despite adding 250,000 new state residents between 1990 and 2000.

The argument that a growing population necessarily necessarily needs new water supplies ignores the data and the role water conservation can play as a means of creating new supplies. Add proper pricing of water (and if people are willing to pay 7 bucks a gallon for bottled water, they ought to be willing to pay a bit more for muni water), and we can likely conserve our way out of many of the supply issues touted as reasons to further degrade rivers like the Clackamas with multiple and overlapping new municipal demands on the resource.

dj,

Yes, we can certainly use less water per capita through conservation strategies, but at whatever our level of wise-use, more people use more water, as with every other resource. Environmentalists are playing a game to placate those involved in social services, in which they pretend that population is not an environmental problem. While social service oriented folks are correct that over-reproduction can be halted by increasing the economic security of the poor, the likelihood of significant progress in that area is low. Chances are that the end of cheap energy, itself, will substantially increase the number of economically insecure people. The effects of Global Warming will augment this.

As fraught with sociological traps as it is, environmentalists are going to need to admit that more people is not a good idea, whether that is caused by above replacement childbearing or by immigration. At present, environmentalists are guilty of ignoring the finite nature of resources, just as are those who oppose environmental protection ignore it. Always diverting the conversation to conservation denies mathematical certainty:

total resource use = total population x per capita resource use

This is inescapable and must be confronted.

Hello BlueNote!

Sure I will comment on your first paragraph, hopefully you will check back and see that I did....

In the late 90s when we were attempting to put " soft drink " machines in schools, I was a candidate for the state leg, and stopping that nonsense was a big part of my campaign. Corporate sponsorship in schools is bad, in my opinion, but common sense also tells me that children full of caffeine and sugar will have a difficult time sitting still in class to learn. These two drugs may also create a greater incidence of disciplinary problems. Simple.

The criminilization of teenagers is the part I objected to. A very large majority of children who attend school are there to learn, and treating them as if they are in the line at the airport tends to demoralize while acclimating them to being searched and being under a cloud of suspicion. Working in high school and middle school environments ( I am a parent, not a teacher ) is the best way for me to have some hope for the future. The greater majority of these children are very bright, polite and earnest.

Are there better ways to tell if a child is drinking alcohol in class? One would think that even if a child isn't acting intoxicated, the alcoholic beverage would have a very distinct and permeating smell. Is this really such a widespread problem? To such a degree that we must support using bottled water and throwing all of those bottles in our landfills and all of the other inherent waste and corporate crookedness involved in that industry?

Simple solution: drinking fountains. Thirsty during class? Wait until between periods, just like you do when you have to go to the toilet.

But clearly this is entirely too complicated- let's just keeping dumping all of those Dasani bottles in the landfills.

And BlueNote- take a look at how CocaCola treats union members inside and outside the US- find me a unionized Coke employee, and I'll buy you a Pepsi ! Also, my apologies for smearing you with that conservative broad brush- sincerely without sarcasm.

I don't think a ban makes any sense.

The comment above on educating first is spot on.

Much better to just inform people about the true cost of that water, it's quality in comparison to their tap, and alternatives, such as filters.

A while back, we had a program where people could get the new low energy bulbs for a very low cost. That was subsidized by the power utility. Why not do the same for water? Make filters available, and insure some education comes along for the ride?

Anyone participating in the filter program can get a voucher for some amount off their water bill, get the filter cheap, etc...

If bottled water is first demonstrated to be a net loss kind of thing, and the bottle bill expansion kicks in, suddenly, bottled watter is more of a hassle than it once was, and people will think about it.

A well timed education effort, that leverages the bottle bill expansion, will have quite an impact at a lower political cost, IMHO.

Rasputin:

I really admire the courage of your convictions. Too bad you're too gutless to put your own name on your posts.

NEW YORK TIMES: In Praise of Tap Water

I am an immune compromised individual. I have a genetic disease called Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome. It is a bone marrow failure disease. Individuals who are immune compromised should not drink tap water, due to the risk of contracting infection or disease, which we cannot fight, from water which has not been completely filtered or boiled.

Bottled water has been filtered, usually through a reverse osmosis filter, which eleiminates all contaminants. It may have come from a municipal water source originally, but it has been filtered. We drink bottled water to reduce our risk factor. By eliminating bottled water for sale, you are putting us at great risk.

A deposit system would most likely reduce the amout of bottles which are simply thrown away, yet allow us to continue to have safe available drinking water.

Bottled water has been filtered, usually through a reverse osmosis filter, which eliminates all contaminants. I usually drink bottled water and i am really very healthy, so drink bottled water than tap water. For more information about bottled water just log on to.... Bottled Water