Tap Water

Poor bottled water. Banned in city buildings by the San Francisco Mayor, prohibited from use at public events by the city council of Ann Arbor, slated for elimination by department heads in Salt Lake City; it’s under attack from all sides. The non-profit, Food and Water Watch has launched a “Take Back the Tap” campaign. Think Outside the Bottle and The Bottled Water Blues.com are also working to convince consumers to stop buying the stuff. What is with that? What’s to hate about the handy little ridged cylindrical containers wrapped in pictures of jagged mountain ranges and filled with cool refreshing goodness?
Fear not, dear reader, I have done several minutes of internet research and I am here to inform you that there are at least two good reasons to “ban the bottle.” Are you ready for them?

Reason Number One: Environmental Impacts
According to the Pacific Institute, the process of making the plastic for water bottles consumes about 20 million barrels of oil per year. 20 million barrels of oil is a lot of oil. Eyes glazing. Statistics being employed. Systems shutting down. Nap time eminent. Wait! Wait! Don’t go to sleep yet. Here is another way to think about it. The energy cost required to make a bottle, transport it, and deal with its disposal (also according to the Pacific Institute) would be like filling ¼ of each bottle with oil (eww).
It also takes a whole lot of water to make a plastic bottle for you to inflate and deflate with your mouth, making loud cracking noises and irritating your cubicle-mates to no end. For every one liter bottle, five liters of water are required to make the thing. So, if we use the Pacific Institute metaphor as a model, that would be like filling up every bottle with five more bottles of itself!... umm never mind. Anyway, what other environmental impacts are there? Oh, just the usual: aquifer depletion, saltwater intrusion, habitat destruction, melting ice caps, tsunamis, incontinence, and restless leg syndrome. Plus the kajillions of empty bottles that end up in the trash. Many of them are floating around in your oceans right now. Maybe they will be occupied by hermit crabs who are looking for new digs with a better view.

Reason Number Two: Health
Bottled water is not, by definition, healthier than tap water. In fact, it may be less so. OK, OK granted there have been no recent stories about horrible bacterial contamination in bottled water. And, true enough, not all public water sources are completely trustworthy. Nevertheless, the idea that bottled water is more healthy or safer than the water from domestic sources is a scam perpetrated by people who want your money. In fact, up to 30 percent of bottled water is tap water (as opposed to, like, “natural spring water,” which comes from some specific, supposedly cleaner/ better top secret location). You may have heard that Aquafina (tap water, bottled by Pepsi… Coca Cola owns Dasani , also tap water), will begin printing the words “public water source” on its labels thanks to pressure from advocacy groups and politicians.
Federal regulations require only that bottled water be as good as tap water, not better, safer, or healthier. And, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, bottled water is “subject to less rigorous testing and purity standards than those which apply to city tap water.” Additionally, there are many requirements for municipal tap water that are more stringent than those imposed on bottled water. For example, tap water can have no (zero, none, zilch) confirmed E. coli or fecal coliform bacteria levels. Whereas, the US Food and Drug Administration rules for bottled water allow for some E. coli and human poop contamination. Drink up!
Also, cities are required to send annual drinking water quality reports to residents. These reports (you get them in your bill) provide sample dates and detection ranges and explanations of the various contaminants cities are required to monitor. They tell you exactly how many parts per million there are of lead and nitrates and perchlorate in your water. Has Pepsi ever sent you that information? And apart from the contaminants in the water, there are the chemicals that can leach from the water bottles themselves, especially when they are re-used.
So, good citizens of the San Gabriel Mountain foothills, be healthy, save energy, conserve water, stop global warming - drink the water from your pipes. It comes from wells and natural springs. It is filtered and monitored and tested. It is good enough to bottle. Better even.

Little Swing Set in the Foothills

Did you ever read Little House on the Prairie? It’s a classic. Written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, illustrated by Garth Williams, it is an autobiographical account of the Ingalls family move from Wisconsin to Kansas in the late 1800s. First published in 1935, it was made into a popular TV show not long after that. It provided the raw material required to make Michael Landon a household name before he tragically succumbed to brain cancer and was memorialized in a moving Boys II Men music video.
This is exactly the book I want to have with me if I am ever stranded on the Kansas prairie in 1870 with nothing more than a covered wagon, a bulldog, a breech loading rifle, 2 panes of glass wrapped in cloth, a barrel of molasses, a bag of corn meal, a team of oxen, and a wife and three daughters. Disguised as a book about a loving family working together to overcome obstacles, it is really a how-to guide on crossing the Missouri River, choosing the best homestead site, and constructing a log cabin with a “good oak door, solid and strong” (this involves lots of hewing and pegging and whittling).
As you read this book you come to pretty much hate Pa Ingalls. And it’s not because he illegally settles his family on Native American land (which he does) or because he snorts cocaine and gambles away the nest egg (which he doesn’t). You hate him because he is better than you. At everything. He always knows just exactly what to do and just exactly how to do it. The foundation he lays is perfectly level and square. His dog obeys him immediately. His roof doesn’t leak. He whistles when he is afraid. He never cheats or gets cheated. He hangs all of his clothes from one peg on the wall.
Showoff. So you made all of your furniture, Pa. Big wup. So did I. I shop at IKEA. Who cares if I used the hex wrench that came in the box instead of pegs and leather straps?
But what does Pa Ingalls have to do with anything, oh weekly columnist in one of my eight small town newspapers? you may be about to ask. Well, certain recent events in my life have got me thinking a lot about construction and tool use and what it means to be a man. Plus, I’m insecure.
Last week, delivered directly to my backyard by two men wearing those black Velcro back braces that don’t actually do anything for your back, were two large and heavy boxes filled with pre-cut, pre-drilled, pre-stained pieces of lumber, 42 baggies filled with all manner of nut, bolt, screw and washer, and a Tolstoy-sized owner’s manual and instruction booklet for the Durango Wooden Playcenter – 2007 (Model 1APO16-07). It’s a swing set.
There’s a fort and a slide and two ladders. There are monkey bars and three different kinds of swings… at least according to the bucolic, festive scene featuring a sturdy-looking swing set on the outside of the box. The structure that I have achieved varies somewhat from the one photographed.
I just spent 12 hours in my backyard wielding a tape measure, cordless drill, level, and rubber mallet (optional). I swear to you that I attached the Fort Rails (R) to the Uprights (C) and that they were even with the previously placed Floor Joists (G)… But then I suppose it is possible that I mistakenly used The Middle Floor Brace (T) or the Tarp Cross Brace (E). None of the pieces of wood are actually labeled with the numbers used to designate them. This may be why I have assembled a structure that my daughter has begun using to launch river rocks at the neighbors’ houses. I have built a trebuchet. And, I am still not quite sure where the wavy slide is supposed to go. I think I am going to nail it to the pepper tree.
So, fine, Pa Ingalls, you win. You are more of a man than I. You built a cabin on the prairie and I can’t even assemble a swing set in my backyard. But don’t you start talking smack, or I’ll let loose this boulder at your head.

No Mercury in Your LEDs

What’s the big deal about mercury, anyway? Thanks to broken thermometers, I have wiled away at least several hours of my life rolling little balls of multiplying and dividing quicksilver around in my hands, chasing them around the bed covers, losing them on the floor, breathing their fumes deep into my lungs. And I’ve suffered no ill efablucratnts. I mean, zablanz ramacrans. Umm, help? Doctor, how many brain cells have I sacrificed to liquid mercury? Whatever. It was worth it because slippery shiny mercury is fun! Drkhdlkh!
So apparently, even though the epically heroic (handsome, winsome, fetching and kind) compact fluorescent light bulb contains an amount of mercury that is only equal to the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen, there are certain sayers of nay out there who claim that this small amount is still too large. Mercury will poison our homes (they say) and our planet and will bring us all to ruin. But is anybody listening to them? Not really. This is what is fun about environmentalists; they make histrionic predictions of doom - based on scientific fact - that everyone ignores until Al Gore makes a documentary.
Maybe you can see the point of these marginalized anti-CFC militants when you consider that the entire continent of Australia is banning incandescents by the year 2010, and Canada and California will be incandescentless 2012. The European Union is considering a ban on the incandescent light bulb, and a US Senate Committee is working on a bill that would ban them in all of the states by 2017.
That adds up to a whole lot of people who will soon be legally required to put little ballpoint pen sized pieces of mercury in various outlets in their houses (or to stop reading after sundown). After 8,000 or so hours, most of these light bulbs will go straight into the trash. How many people do you think will actually go out of their ways to recycle the bulbs correctly? How many will make that extra trip to IKEA with the single bulb riding in the back of their Suburbans? And what will the environmental impacts of all of those extra trips to IKEA be? And why are all of the people who work there so aloof and intimidating with their purple hair and tattoos?
But wait! I have a solution to the environmental disaster caused by the first solution to the original environmental disaster. It will cost you even more money. Are you surprised? It’s the Light Emitting Diode bulb. (yay applause hooray)
An LED light bulb will last 50,000 hours (which is basically the life expectancy of a cat) and will save you $100 in electricity costs over the life of the bulb.
Now, if you do a little bit of math, you will realize that an LED that takes 14 years to realize a $100 savings is probably not going to be what anyone could really call “cheap.” In fact, the 1-watt LED (meant to replace a 40-watt normal bulb) will run you $40. The “premium” 10-watt bulb (to take the place of your 100-watt normal one) is only $99. You can buy these at ecoleds.com.
There is only one small drawback (other than the fact that it costs 50 times more than the bulbs you are currently using). The LED bulb is a “directional light” – a spotlight, which according to Mike Adams, founder of ecoleds.com, makes it “very useful for dynamic lighting, accent lighting or projecting light on a certain part of the room.” You can’t really stick it in a lamp. Unless you happen to be very fond of that one part of your ceiling and you want to show it off.
You might, though, consider shining your environmentally friendly eco LED onto the signed “Certificate of CO2 Emission Reductions” (suitable for framing) issued by Mike Adams and company when you make a purchase. The certificate “allows you to publicly display the number of tons of CO2 you are preventing from being introduced into the environment.”
Sadly, it doesn’t say a thing about mg of mercury not used. But you know that it’s not in there. And, at least when your LED burns out (around the time your three-year-old graduates high school) you can smash it on the floor or burn it in the back yard along with your bald tires or just toss it in the trash. Just like in the good old days.

Mercury in Your Light Bulbs

Can it be that the diminutive, unassuming, intestine-like Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb is really going to be the single-most important piece of technology in saving ourselves from ourselves? Is the path to a greener, more eco-groovy future to be lit by the Al Gore, Leo DiCaprio (and my mother-in-law) endorsed CFL? This little greenhouse-gas-buster seems to have everything going for it.
One of those things it has is that it takes electricity and actually turns it into light, which is not something that can be said for the incandescent bulb, which turns 90 percent of the energy it consumes into heat. Another is that a CFL lasts, like, eight times longer than an incandescent bulb. And, even though you pay more for a CFL up front, all of the experts in white lab coats tell us that a CFL will save you 30 bucks in energy costs over the life of the bulb as compared to the old school Thomas Edison model. There is no denying (unless you are really bad at math and are very stubborn) that if everyone started using CFLs there would be a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (lighting accounts for about 10 percent of all household electricity usage), and that the polar bears would dance clumsy polar bear dances of joy on their non-melting icebergs. Also, if there were ever any doubts as to the mainstream viability of the CFL, let those be banished by Wal-Mart’s commitment to sell 100 million of them this year.
Thanks to the CFL, you can save money as you save the planet. So if you already happen to have a shopping cart filled with typical Wal-Mart fare (maybe a shotgun, toilet paper, Cinderella underpants, goldfish, hair dye, and a bocce ball set) throw in a pack of planet-saving light bulbs, too.
There is just one little hang-up. Mercury. Not the planet. The element – it’s used to make CFLs, and is somewhere in those twisty little white tubes doing something important. I don’t know what it’s doing… reacting with ultraviolet light? Exciting the white phosphor? Whatever it’s purpose, work hard to make sure that it keeps doing that thing and does not get spread all over the kitchen floor in a tragic accident involving gravity and clumsiness and dropped light bulbs. But even if a little mercury does end up on the kitchen floor, the US Environmental Protection Agency says not to freak out. Just sweep and ventilate. There is not enough mercury in a single bulb to warrant deployment of the Haz-Mat team.
The real problem is in the landfills where all of the 3.3 mg of mercury per old broken bulb could add up to potentially significant environmental problems (not global warming, though). So, when you are all finished with your CFLs, after they have flickered their last flicks, make sure that they do not end up in the trash with regular waste that you just throw into the landfill, like, you know, batteries and paint thinner. We don’t want lots of mercury floating around out there causing things like neurological disorders, speech impairment, muscle weakness, and decreasing cognitive function. That would be bad.
But listen, don’t get too agitated about a little mercury in your light bulbs. You can still save the planet. Make the trip to the city yard on that schedule hazardous materials disposal day. Or, even better, go to IKEA (the only retailer offering the service) to turn in your old CFLs for proper disposal and recycling. While you are there, you can hit the cafeteria and enjoy the kid’s Mac and Cheese for 95 cents among the brightly colored disposable furniture. Feel good. Be satisfied. The polar bears are dancing.