[SA] I do know earlier in the trip I did stop to buy a bottle of water at a convinent store. I knew this convinent store was on my route, and I waited for this particular place to stop.
[Arlo] Consider this. According to the cost-analysis given here (http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/askpablo-exotic-bottled-water-002401.php), which looks at the "true cost" of producing and moving a bottle of water from Fiji to San Francisco, it takes approximately 8.5 ounces (243 grams) of gas to produce/move this one bottle of water. That's about .06 gallons. That puts it about one gallon of fossil fuel for each 16 or so bottles of water moved from Fiji just to San Francisco (remember once you distribute within the US, you are adding more fossil fuel to the mix). According to the San Francisco Chronicle (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/21/BUGE7NL8RA1.DTL), "more than 180 million bottles of Fiji Water were sold last year". The amount of fossil fuel consumed just to make and distribute these bottles to San Francisco is about 11,250,000 gallons of fuel. And that's just Fiji Water, and that's just to San Francisco. Looking at the totality of bottled water produced and consumed, Earth Policy Organization (one of those commie, anti-American, evil enemy of freedom groups) noted "making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year. Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year." I have suggested to those in my area to use home water purification systems, or distillers, to lower the cost and impact of consuming water, while still getting good, clean water to drink. But these require larger upfront investments, and so many are unwilling. Using reusable containers to carry your own water, rather than disposable bottles, is also an idea worth encouraging. But as I said, we are a people of hindsight, not foresight. We can't be inconvenienced or bothered to think about tomorrow, or about larger waste and resource management issues. Hell, I'm an evil commie tyrant for simply suggesting the idea that we should be concerned about how we are using and disposing resources. [SA] This static pattern wasn't open to springs as being a place to stop for water. [Arlo] Getting a bottle of clean water from a convenience store in a pinch is something worth keeping. But our practice should be informed by larger impact concerns. Stay as local and resuable as you can. And if you happen upon polluted or undrinkable springs in the forest, report them to the PA DEP (or your local state agency). We should not settle for a polluted world where drinking from springs makes you ill. In closing consider this. If one bottle of water is 12oz, that's about .09 gallons and cost is about $1. For gas, at $3/gallon, .09 gallons would cost you about 27 cents. Bottled water is about 4 times more expensive than gasoline, which is mined, refined, shipped, and subject to political turmoil. Water is "the single most abundant resource on the planet" (Dennis Miller). moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
