Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink

We hear about greenhouse gases and carbon footprints all the time, but we hear less frequently about a water footprint.

Here’s some news from the UK.

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Overfilling kettles wastes £68m a year, says report

Some 40% of people boiled water five times a day or more, the study found

Three-quarters of British households overfill their kettles, wasting a total of £68m each year, an Energy Saving Trust (EST) report has suggested.

The study of 86,000 households also found the average shower lasted seven-and-a-half minutes. A minute less and £215m would be saved, the EST said.

Washing clothes at 30C and filling kettles to the required amount were among ways to save money, it added.

It said people must not think they were “powerless to control our water use”.

The EST found British homes collectively used nine billion litres of water a day with showers using a quarter of that and toilets using 22%.

Kitchen appliances, such as kettles, dishwashers and washing machines – together with taps – also used 22% of household water, the report said.

The study found 95% of people boiled the kettle every day with 40% boiling water five times a day or more.

And it suggested the average household washed dishes by hand 10 times a week and used a dishwasher three times a week.

The EST said bigger households could make energy and water savings by using modern, efficient dishwashers rather than washing by hand.

Other ways consumers could save money included installing an “eco” shower head, it added.

EST water strategy manager Andrew Tucker said that, when people thought of energy use, “they think of heating and lighting, running electrical appliances or filling the car with petrol”.

“It’s all too easy to turn on the tap and not think about the consequences,” he said.

Read more

Here’s some more startling facts: (Sorry, forgot the source)

• It takes around 3,000 litres of water to produce a burger…

• That’s 15 trillion litres of water – on burgers. Just in the UK.
• 14 billion burgers were consumed in the United States in 2012. That’s around 42 trillion litres of water.

• It takes around 9,000 litres of water to produce a chicken.
• It takes around 2,700 litres of water each bar of chocolate.
• Your cotton pyjamas take 9,000 litres of water to produce.
• It takes something like four litres of water to produce a one-litre plastic bottle of water. Talk about irony, water wasted to produce bottles – for water.
• It takes around 72,000 litres of water to produce one of the ‘chips’ that typically powers your laptop.

We are using water like there was plenty. Of course the oceans are full of it, but there is only a small percentage of useable/drinkable water on the planet and technology is making us use it faster and faster with scant regard for the consequences.

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Saturday Satire on Eco

This is a shocker

That rush of cold water and bulging cheeks

Do you remember the carefree days of your youth 1950s-70s? Running around the backyard screaming with delight with the garden hose, spraying everybody whether they wanted it or not, shoving the end in your mouth for that refreshing rush of cold water on a sweltering hot day?

Don’t do it!

At least, not before you’ve read this:

What’s in your Garden Hose?

It is the perfect time of year for this question and you may be surprised to know that many water hoses are very toxic!

That being said, there are many good garden hoses on the market that are lead free and phthalates free, as for BPA free, stick to natural rubber or 100% FDA & NSF Grade Virgin Polyurethane Materials

First let me give you a little info to use when buying any gardening products.

The Ecology Center in Ann Arbor, MI tested 179 kinds of garden products, including garden hoses, tools, gloves and kneeling pads.  They found 70% of the products contained levels of “high concern” of one or more toxic substances… including lead, cadmium and mercury.

From the report:

• 30% of all products contained over 100 ppm lead in one or more component. 100 ppm is the Consumer Product Safety Commission Standard (CPSC) for lead in children’ products.
• 100% of the garden hoses sampled for phthalates contained four phthalate plasticizers which are currently banned in children’s products.
• Two water hoses contained the flame retardant 2,3,4,5-tetrabromo-bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (TBPH).

So you can see that there are reasons for concern.

Avoid hoses with this label

Read the labels: Avoid hoses with a California Prop 65 warning that says “this product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects and other reproductive harm.”

Buy hoses that are “drinking water safe” and “lead-free.”

Reblogged from: GoGreenAmerica There’s a little more and some brands that are okay.

Make you Fink on Friday

For those of you who are aware of the health dangers posed by artificial sweeteners and dutifully avoid them, the featured study findings may come as a shocking surprise.

Researchers have found that the artificial sweetener sucralose (Splenda) is a widespread contaminant in waste water, surface water, and ground water. In a recent test, water samples from 19 U.S. drinking water treatment plants serving more than 28 million people were analyzed for sucralose. The sweetener was found to be present in:

• The source water of 15 out of 19 of drinking water treatment plants tested
• The finished water of 13 out of 17 plants, and
• In 8 out of 12 water distribution systems

The average amounts of sucralose in source water and finished water was 440 ng/L and 350 ng/L respectively.

According to the study:

“Further, in the subset of [drinking water treatment plants] with distribution system water sampled, the compound was found to persist regardless of the presence of residual chlorine or chloramines … The results of this study confirm that sucralose [is] an indicator compound … for the presence of other recalcitrant compounds in finished drinking water”.

Recalcitrant compounds are organic or synthetic compounds that resist being broken down by chemical processes, such as those employed by water treatment facilities. This is troublesome, particularly as sucralose can be quite detrimental to human health, and the contamination appears to be very widespread in US water supplies.

Sucralose Destroys Healthy Bacteria

Three years ago, an animal study published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health reported that sucralose:

• Reduced the amount of good bacteria in the animals’ intestines by 50 percent
• Increased the pH level in the intestines
• Contributed to increases in body weight, and
• Affected P-glycoprotein (P-gp) levels in such a way that crucial health-related drugs could be rejected. In terms of human health, this P-gp effect could result in medications used in chemotherapy, AIDS treatment and treatments for heart conditions being shunted back into your intestines, rather than being absorbed
• Is absorbed by fat cells (contrary to previous claims)

The fact that Splenda can destroy up to 50 percent of your healthy intestinal bacteria is truly disturbing as these help maintain your body’s overall balance of friendly versus unfriendly micro-organisms, and support your overall immunity and general health. Many people are already deficient in healthy bacteria due to choosing highly processed foods, which is why a high-quality probiotic is one of the very few supplements I recommend for nearly everyone. And now we discover that this artificial sweetener also contaminates a majority of US municipal water supplies as well…

Splenda Has NEVER Been Proven Safe for Human Consumption

Source: Care2 Read more:

Opinion:

This is rather more than disturbing.

I avoid artificial sweeteners, HFCSs, etc like the plague because I know they are a danger to ones health and well-being.

Now, I find that all the idiots who believe the corporate crap and use them are feeding them to me through the sewerage.

I can’t avoid them, because once they are in the water supplies, they are there. They are there because you idiots use them and nobody takes them out before it gets to me.

Stop it!