River of Support: Canadian Dealer Is Serious About Giving Back

In a time of economic uncertainty, some local businesses take it upon themselves to give back. When it comes to the local Culligan dealership, owner Paul Moorman sees charitable donations as vital to supporting our home community, on behalf of both the company and its employees.

“Above all else, the Culligan Man is a local resource, and we are always pleased to lend a hand to a variety of worthwhile causes,” says Moorman, who owns Culligan dealerships in Peterborough and Belleville, Ontario.

In 2009, Culligan donated 22,608 single-serve bottles of clean, potable water and 293 bottles of 18-litre Culligan water.

That’s more than 16,500 litres of water.

• Here’s just a few of the worthwhile organizations and events Moorman's Culligan dealership has supported during the past year.

o Rotary Club
o United Way Dragon Boat Festival
o Trump AIDS Walk
o Terry Fox Run
o Make-A-Wish Foundation
o ALS Walk
o Lung Association Pull for Kids
o AIDS Walk for Life
o PEC Marathon
o One to One Walk for Cancer
o United Way Casino Royale
o Relay for Life
o Lung Association Amazing Pace
o MS Walk
o Festival of Trees
o Children’ Water Festival – Peterborough
o Children’s Water Festival - Belleville
o Salvation Army
o Telus Walk to Cure Cancer
o Fiesta Buckhorn
o Easter Seals
o Canada Day Festival
o Alzheimers Society
o Walk to Cure Diabetes
o Rotary Loves Kids Golf Tournament
o YMCA Kids Reverse Triathlon
o Trenton Military Family Resource Centre

Our First Twitter-generated Blog Post!

Tweet. Drink. Repeat.

The Culligan Man loves the social media movement – for a few reasons. First off, the sheer amount of information keeps us better educated and better connected. News pours through my Tweetdecks like water over Niagara Falls. Secondly, it allows Culligan to ask consumers what’s important to them – and guess what? They answer. So in keeping with the invisible social media rulebook, it’s up to us to provide solid answers to consumer questions.

Now, I am proud to announce the unveiling of our first Tweet-generated blog post:

Twitter: @Local_Social
Where: Chicago
Question: “Do I really need bottled water in my home?"

Answer:

The Water Wise Guy crew will respond with a little help from our friends, a.k.a the Culligan dealers from around the continent. We’ll chime in to emphasize a point here and there.

From Steve Rangel, Rock Valley Culligan

There are a few variables to take into consideration when it comes to bottled water. There is a difference between need & want. Depending on the water source, i.e. well water, municipal water, etc you may be better off with bottled or reverse osmosis water.

The best way to find out would be through a water analysis.

(WWG thought: Private wells serving less than 25 people are not covered by the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act. Arsenic and nitrates are fairly common contaminants in the Midwest, and it’s up to the individual to test, so bottled water offers a worry-free drinking water option.)

Paul Moorman from Culligan in Belleville, Ontario breaks down why he has bottled water in his home:

This is in addition to just drinking great tasting water.

- I use it in my ice cube trays – makes harder, clearer cubes that last longer and don’t mess with the taste of the drink I put them in.

- My wife uses it in her iron to prevent blocking the steamer.

- It keeps our coffee maker clean and working better. And the coffee tastes better too!

My dog likes it better than our tap water!

(WWG: They can talk to dogs in Canada.)

- I sure can’t get high quality drinking water when I’m on the go. Only bottled water lets me do that. Having it at home to fill re-usable bottles saves time and money!

- My daughter fills her eco-friendly stainless steel bottle with mineral free, high quality Culligan water for her high school basketball games.

Yes, it is a Bubbler. And No, You Cannot Drink from it.

Recess is over and kids are racing to the school entrance to be first in line for the drinking fountain—or bubbler, depending on where you are from.

Imagine if once the rush of students approaches the bubbler, a sign above it reads “Do Not Drink: Water is tainted with nitrates, a potential carcinogen and a pesticide that may cause male sterility.” “Do Not Drink” is about the only thing that will register and considering a 9-year-old’s thirst after recess, tainted or not, water will be gulped down. And who can blame the kids? After an intense game of tag, how can you not hit up the bubbler? You played hard! And moms and dads always say to drink eight glasses of water a day. Water is good for you, right?

No unfortunately, not all water is good for you.

Recently, an AP investigation found that contaminants have surfaced at public and private schools in all 50 states—in both small farm towns and inner cities. Scary, I know. According to the AP investigation, 1 out of every 5 schools with its own water supply violated the Safe Drinking Water Act in the past decade. That’s a staggering 20% of schools.

Yes, this is really happening. Here are two examples of reported effects of toxic school drinking water:

• In 2001, 28 children at a Worthington, Minnesota elementary school experienced severe stomach aches and nausea after drinking water tainted with lead and copper.
• In Seattle, a 6-year-old girl suffered stomach aches and became disoriented and easily exhausted. The girl's mother asked her daughter's school to test its water, and also tested a strand of her daughter's hair. Tests showed high levels of copper and lead.

Luckily, steps have been taken. See improvement options, according to the article, below:

• Improve Water System: In California, the Department of Public Health has given out more than $4 million in recent years to help districts overhaul their water systems.
• New School Building: After wrestling with unsafe levels of arsenic for almost two years, administrators in Sterling, Ohio, finally bought water coolers for elementary school students last fall. Now they plan to move students to a new building.
• Bottled Water: Many school officials say buying bottled water is less expensive than fixing old pipes. Baltimore, for instance, has spent more than $2.5 million on bottled water over the last six years.

I know Chemistry is a subject in almost every school; it should not be in every school’s water.

Bottled water debate continued....

I hope everyone's Tuesday is shaping up nicely. I had a couple of people send me this video, and while the production is not fantastic, it still has some interesting facst, figures and angles.

One of the best slides in this piece is the one that points out bottled water users also use the tap heavily and vice versa.

The Water Wise Guy finds himself always engrossed in the tap water vs. bottled water debate, and I am going to let it rest for a moment and let this YouTube clip do the talking with pretty pictures.

What the heck is reverse osmosis?

Recent reports have brought up more questions than answers about drinking water, either from the tap or bottled. It is vital to take steps towards improving the water you drink, especially with the constant uncertainty of how clean our drinking water is. Installing a reverse osmosis system in your home, at your kitchen sink, is a convenient and logical solution to ensuring your clean water.

You may be asking yourself, what does a reverse osmosis system actually do? If my water needs to be filtered, why not use one of those water pitchers, my refrigerator filter or a screw-on faucet filter?

To understand the benefits of reverse osmosis, and what differentiates it from a filtered water pitcher, begin with understanding the process of osmosis. Osmosis is the natural movement of a lesser concentrated liquid through a semi-permeable membrane, into a solution of a higher concentration. Osmosis equalizes the concentration of the liquid on both sides of the membrane. Simply put, it mixes clean purified water with contaminated water.

Reverse osmosis reverses this process by creating pressure to force the contaminated water through a semi-permeable membrane that removes the gunk and junk; thus producing delicious drinking water. Moreover, a reverse osmosis system is made up of four carbon filters. Each filter removes specific contaminants from the water.

Function of each filter:

o Filter One: This filter removes sediment; the big stuff.

o Filter Two: Allows the sediment-free water to travel through the filter, trapping and removing organic chemicals and chlorine. These are the smaller particles that water pitchers, refrigerator filters, and screw-on facet filters definitely miss.

o Filter Three: This membrane removes 90-98 percent of the chemicals left in the water, depending on the water pressure and temperature. The trapped sediments are then dumped into a drain. The filtered water flows into a two to three gallon storage tank.

o Filter Four: When the water is ready to be enjoyed, the stored water flows through this final carbon filter removing any possible taste and odor left in the water. Essentially, polishing the water.

A reverse osmosis system’s filter process pushes water through four filters, in comparison to a filtered water pitcher, refrigerator filter and a screw-on faucet filter that runs water through a carbon filter once. A reverse osmosis system, like Culligan’s AC-30, provides you with an endless-supply of clean, safe drinking water right at your kitchen sink.

Tap Water Safer than Bottled? Not According to the Facts!

The debate over bottled water versus tap water has recently found new life due to consumer curiosity on how the industry is regulated and enforced. While the argument is not concentrated on the purity of the water itself, the conversation challenges the current rules governing the sourcing and nutritional information bottled-water producers are required to let their customers know. Simply stated, this is a question of consumer choice when it comes to their drinking water.

But when municipal and city water utilities make the claim that their water is safer due to the perception of stronger oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), they are strongly misleading the public. There are many variables to consider when it comes to water quality throughout the country, especially where the tap water suppliers are concerned.

Wherever the product comes from, the filtration process of the bottled water should not be dismissed or discounted. For example, Culligan dealers are independently owned and operated, and the individual franchisees are responsible for their own product. All of their water goes through the reverse osmosis filtration process, which eliminates up to 99.9% of impurities and contaminants despite the source. In terms of labeling and disclosure, the term “reverse osmosis” and “purified” meet all the standards approved and enforced by the Food and Drug Administration.

Before you ban the bottle and run to the tap, keep a few things in mind.

• The AP reported earlier this year there are 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals throughout the country’s municipal water systems. These are unregulated compounds. Quite simply, modern chemistry is outrunning the utilities’ technology.

• The health limits and legal limits provided by the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act are often different, with the legal limit at a much higher threshold than the health limit.

• Water utilities don’t have to include every contaminant in their water. Places like Chicago, for example, are mum on the pesticides and sex hormones in its system.

• Check how your tap water stacked up in one of the most intensive tap water studies ever done by the third-party Environmental Working Group’s Tap Water Database. According to their research, 140 million contaminants with no enforceable regulation are attacking your tap. Residents cannot pick which utility serves their home, but they can choose a consumer water supplier that can ensure its quality.

Culligan constantly develops technologies devoted to sustainable high water quality such as whole-house filtration systems and bottle-less water coolers. Culligan dealers are also quick to point out bottled water is crucial for disaster relief, since it is safely packaged and potable.In fact, an EPA study counted 433,947 documented illnesses and 73 deaths between 1991 and 2002 stemming from tap water. Bottled water has never been cited as a source for a large-scale outbreak.

There are many sides to the bottled water issue, keep the ‘source’ in mind.

Highlights from the Oral Testimony and Question Responses

Deputy Principal Commissioner Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein
Food and Drug Administration
At the Hearing on the Regulation of Bottled Water
July 8, 2009
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation
Committee on Energy and Commerce
U.S. House of Representatives

FDA on Bottled Water Safety:

“In general, FDA’s oversight of bottled water I think can be described as successful. The agency is aware of no major outbreaks of illness or serious safety concerns associated with bottled water in the past decade. “

Later, answering Rep. Greg Waldren’s question on lead in water, FDA stated:

“In fact, I advised the school superintendent to turn-off all the drinking fountains in the Baltimore city public schools because of the problems they were having with lead. And to go with bottled water across the system. In turned out to be cheaper also, given the expense that they had of testing the municipal water because of old buildings and the problems they had with the pipes in the school. So, as a health commissioner, I think there are certain scenarios where, for example, after certain types of disruption of the water supply, the water can unsafe for a period of time, you recommend a switch to bottled water or boil it.”


In a Comparison with Soft Drinks, FDA stated:

“A cola is a food product that is not subject to the Good Manufacturing Practices that exist specifically for bottled water. I would say there is definitely more regulations on bottled water… Bottled water has a whole set of regulations that are really just for bottled water.”

FDA On Interstate Sales of Bottled Water:

“If the bottle comes from outside the state or the cap comes from outside the state, even if it’s just sold within the state, it counts as interstate. And there’s a presumption, I understand, it would be interstate. But in theory, there may be products that could challenge our authority over them although I’m not aware for water they we’ve heard about a problem that we haven’t get able to get to, either directly or through the states.”

FDA On the Use of Recycled Plastic Bottles:

“I’m not aware of any special concerns for recycled plastic. I think if there are concerns people have, they should share them with the agency.”

FDA’s Overview of Bottled Water Regulations:

“FDA has established specific regulations for bottled water in the code of Federal regulations. These regulations include standard of identity regulations that define different types of bottled water, such as spring water verses mineral water and standard of quality regulations that establish allowable levels for chemical, physical, microbial and radiological contaminants. FDA has established Good Manufacturing Practice regulations for the process and bottling of bottled drinking water.

Labeling and GMP regulations for foods in general also apply to bottled water.

"Federal law requires FDA to set similar standards for bottled water as exist for municipal water or explain why they should not apply. FDA has established such standards for over 90 contaminants and in some cases, such as for lead or copper, the FDA limits are stricter for bottled water than for municipal water.
And another point to make in this regard is the way the testing is done is different. For example, take the lead standard. Any test that is high is violative, that is done on FDA-regulated bottled water. For the municipal water, if only a percentage of the samples is above a certain level does the municipal water supply fail that. They’re allowed to have certain failures and not have it as a failure for the municipal water supply. It just illustrates there’s a different approach that’s taken into context.”

FDA Monitoring and Testing of Bottled Water:

“FDA monitors and inspects bottled water products and processing plants as part of its general food safety program. Inspections occur approximately once every one to three years. The Agency inspects violative firms more frequently depending on the number of significance and occurrence of violations. FDA field offices follow-up on consumer and trade complaints and other leads on potentially violative bottled water products. As for other types of food, FDA periodically collects and analyzes samples of bottled water. Samples of foreign bottled water offered for entry may be collected and tested to determine if they are in compliance with the laws and regulations. And last, we test the water for microbial, radiological or chemical contamination.”

FDA and the new e-Coli standard:

“Most recently, on May 29, 2009, FDA published a final rule to require that bottled water manufacturers test source water and finished bottled water products for total coliform organisms and to prohibit distribution of products containing any E.coli indicator of fecal contamination. FDA is also requiring that before a bottler can use source water from a source that tested positive for E.coli, the bottler must take appropriate measures to rectify or eliminate the cause of the problem. And the bottler must keep records of such actions.”

Later, answering Rep. Greg Waldren’s question on E.c oli issues, he stated:

“My understanding is that public water systems are required to collect monthly total coliform samples throughout their distribution systems and that, if they are positive, they must be tested for E.coli. For systems collecting more than 40 samples per month, if more than 5% are positive, that triggers a violation. If it’s less than 40 samples per month, than one positive test triggers a violation. For FDA, bottled water, if there’s any violation, that kicks in. For municipal, if its a lots of tests, then there has to be a certain percentage of the tests filed to trigger a violation.”

FDA On DEHP, he stated:

“We don’t believe it is being used in water bottles or water caps.”