Don't Let Your Water Get Taken Along For The Ride

You’ve heard the stories about environmental waste from bottled water in those handy 16 ounce plastic bottles. To hear the stories you’d think these bottles are single handedly responsible for high gas prices. We were curious that the stories did not attack soft drinks in plastic bottles or one gallon plastic bottles in the grocer store. They all use petroleum but not a peep from the media. We did some research and found that the story is being driven by a public relations firm hired by the nation’s water utilities. Why do they care?

First every consumer that buys bottled water is telling the nation’s water utilities that they don’t trust the product that comes from their tap. So they feel every person carrying a bottle of water is an attack on their competency. In a way after deaths several years ago in Milwaukee due to cryptosporidium and high manganese or boil water alerts in hundreds of cities yearly, it is understandable why the consumer is skittish.

Second, while most water tests okay at the utility well head, things happen to water after it travels miles under city streets. For instance, every time a water main breaks, e. coli, a bacteria that can cause illness, enters the pipe. In some cities water mains are made of lead that can leach into the drinking water. Some cities have been aggressive in changing out those pipes, but that didn’t stop them from sending water through those pipes for years without telling the consumer about the risks. And there must have been risks or the utilities wouldn’t spend millions replacing pipes. And lead pipes may be better than what lies under some city streets. In some southern cities, hollowed out cypress logs still are part of the water system in those communities.

Third, chlorine is added to purify the water. Google chlorine sometime and see what the health effects it causes. In World War I they called chlorine “mustard gas” and they used it to poison enemy troops. Now we put it in our water to keep illness from infesting our water supply. You certainly will want to keep from drinking that and some would argue we shouldn’t even shower in the stuff.

Water needs to be portable because hydration is key for health. A healthy diet is an acceptable trade off for the environment. If you’re concerned about being seen carrying bottled water, put a sticker on it saying “I recycle”. Because the only way bottled water can waste petroleum is if we don’t recycle the bottle.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

I saw the news stories about pharmaceuticals ending up in our waterways and I began to wonder what else might be in the water after we use it. Even worse, what am I putting in waterways? If pharmaceuticals pass through our bodies and end up in our waterways there must be other products I use that end up there, too. For instance, what happens to all the soap and detergent we use? You know the used laundry water, dishwater and shower water? It has residue soap in it and most soap is petroleum-based. So I checked and found that we spend $20 billion on soap and detergents in this country every year. And all of it gets flushed down the drain to sewage plants and into our waterways. So I wondered, is there a way we can stop using so much soap? Imagine the toll it takes on our pocketbooks and the environment to manufacture, package (in petroleum based plastic bottles) and ship $20 billion in soaps, detergents and shampoos. Yikes, that’s a big environmental footprint.

We can’t stop washing our skin clothes and hair, but we can use a lot less of this stuff. To do so, it occurred we must change the culture of lather-rinse-repeat. Those three words appear on nearly every bottle of shampoo. Does anyone out there need to do two applications of shampoo or is it just a ploy to waste, I mean sell, more soap? Sometimes water is so bad we need to use a lot of this stuff. In our area we have hard water so if you don’t have a water softener you may need to lather, rinse, and repeat. We have a water softener so it is one and done for us. That saves us a lot of soap and detergent.

Maybe in all the detergent TV ads where we see the housewife pouring brimming cups of detergent into the washer they’re talking to people in hard water areas. Those ads are using a suggestive sell on the amount of soap they’d like people to consume. In every case, they show the housewife adding too much soap. If you’re adding all that detergent you should get a water softener. And in every case, you only really need to add detergent based on how dirty the clothes are. If the water has a slightly slippery feel, you have enough detergent to clean, you don’t need billowing suds. Any “slipperiness” above minimum is wasteful and does not contribute to the cleanliness of the fabric, only contributes to the water waste stream.

And automatic dishwasher detergent, you need only a thimbleful for nearly all dishwashers. The water in a dishwasher is hot enough to sanitize already, you may want a thimbleful of the detergent for extra cleaning power and sanitizing. Beyond that is just means more chemicals in our waterways.

Things we put down our drains are showing up everywhere, they don’t just disappear. In the streets of our town they put signs on the storm drains saying “drains to lake” to remind people that their actions have consequences to our waterways. After the pharmaceutical story relating to our rivers and streams, we should probably put a sign on the drain in our kitchens and baths saying the same thing…Drains To Lake.