FridgeFilters.com Blog

How Much Are You Paying for Tap Water?

At Fridge Filters, we're big fans of filtered water. We're not such big fans of disposable plastic water bottles. That's because water you buy at the store can cost anywhere from 50-2700 times more than filtered water from your faucet.

Some supporters of bottled water may claim that their bottled water is from fresh mountain springs or secluded mineral wells on remote islands, however those claims may not be true. Recently, several businesses have been duped by water companies advertising "fresh, great-tasting spring water" when, in fact, it is merely municipal tap water. 

 

A plumbing company in Chicago recently filed a lawsuit against Nestlé Waters North America for this terrible lie in advertising. It was quoted "Nestlé Waters' failure to discloser this critical fact caused consumers to purchase five-gallon jugs thatthey wouldn't have otherwise purchased... and caused consumers to pay more" than municipal water costs.

 

Nestlé Waters North America is believed to have a 32% market share in the bottled water industry and sells brands like Ice Mountain, Poland Spring, Arrowhead, Deer Park, and Nestlé Pure Life. With so many brands under one corporate giant, this lawsuit could change the face of the bottled water industry. There is already an increased focus on bottled water sources, labeling, cost, and environmental issues surrounding production. 

 

Over the years, there have been other lawsuits similar to this one. Even major companies like Pepsi and Coca-Cola have been involved in them. At the end of the day, it's important to know that tap water in America is some of the best you can get in the world. Why pay 2700 times more when you can get the same great, quality water right from the filter? 

 

Water for Panem: Hunger Games and the Hunt for Good Water

OK we'll admit it. We are obsessed. Have you seen the movie? Read the books? Are you Catching Fire too? Yep, we're talking about The Hunger Games.

If you're like us, with Panem ever on your radar, you've noticed Hunger Games merchandise just about everywhere. You can spend your hard-earned tesserae on a Hunger Games board game, Effie Trinket nail polish, a Hunger Games Snuggie (seriously), and even...wait for it...

Hunger Games water. 

Really.

h20 Spring Water has partnered with The Hunger Games to be the film's official water. While we see the tie-in (finding water was Katniss' first objective in the Arena, after all) doesn't this sound like something they'd drink in the Capitol? You know, while so many others go without clean water?

Luckily for us, we don't live in the Districts and our tap water is just as safe as bottled water. Though we admit that even Haymitch would approve of h2O's eco-friendly packaging, we'd rather fill one of these stainless steel Arena-Proof water bottles with filtered water from our tap.

You don't have to travel the the twelve districts to find good water--it's right in your home, where you're safe from trackerjackers, Cato's weapons, and President Snow.

So join the revolution and overthrow the bottle! 

www.fridgefilters.com

 

FridgeFilters Kanteen Giveaway : One bottle at a time

The Klean Kanteen Reflect bottle is great! I love my Klean Kanteen and I know a lot of you are interested in getting one as well. We will continue to give away a free bottle with every 100 likes, but I thought I would let you know if you wanted to get your's today we are offering 50% off with the coupon code FBKANTEEN

To enter the drawing for a free Klean Kanteen Reflect 27-ounce bottle all you have to do is like our page at www.facebook.com/fridgefilters. We are giving away a Klean Kanteen to a randomly selected fan of our Facebook page every time we get 100 new “likes”.

Why are we giving away Klean Kanteens? We feel that throwing out all those single-use plastic bottles just doesn't make sense. Instead of using a plastic PET bottle you can save money by switching to a reusable bottle like the Klean Kanteen Reflect.

Together we can make a difference one bottle at a time!

The problem with the old way: Each year in the US alone we buy 29 billion single serve bottles of water and more than half of those bottles will not be recycled. To make things worse, plastic bottles can leach harmful chemicals into your drinking water.

A better future with the new way: A reusable bottle makes it easy to be safe and healthy while saving money and reducing plastic waste. The Klean Kanteen Reflect bottle is 100% plastic-free and comes with a stylish bamboo lid. Klean Kanteen products are made from food grade stainless steel and are 100% BPA-free. The Reflect Bottle is the perfect way to take clean filtered water with you everywhere you go.

Stay Hydrated on Campus

A semester of clean water

Backpack, check. iPod, check. Meal plan...maybe, what's the cafeteria like? Sound familiar? Before you head back to school this Fall make sure you add one more item to your list, a water pitcher. Drinking plenty of water helps you stay healthy and alert. A recent study by researchers at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City that monitored college students found that students who showed mild signs of dehydration also reported they felt less energetic and focused.

Drinking water is essential for an active and healthy lifestyle, but how do you make sure to drink enough water every day? One thing that really helps is to make sure you have easy access to clean drinking water. Those old pipes in your dorm may not deliver the best water, but with a Brita Pitcher you can filter out the contaminants and have great tasting water to drink at any time.

Bottled water is expensive and has a negative impact on the planet, but unfiltered tap water often has an unpleasant taste or smell. Brita filters remove bad taste and odor along with lead and other impurities to give you cleaner, better tasting drinking water. Using a Brita Pitcher with a built in water filter is the ideal way to stay hydrated on campus. Be good to your body, drink lots of water!

Independent Investigation of Bottled Water finds unsavory results

I came across this article from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) where they tested 10 major brands of bottled water and found common chemical pollutants present in some samples. The report claims that bottled water from the Walmart brand (Sam's Choice) and Giant Foods' Acadia brand contained trihalomethanes, a disinfectant byproduct, in levels that exceed California standards for safe drinking water. The bottles tested came from manufacturing plants from several states, but some states tested far better than others. So what does it all mean?

First, you should know that the state of California has stricter standards for public drinking water than the rest of the country. This means that a chemical can violate the legal limit for a contaminant in the state of California and still be legal in another state. California also enforces stricter standards than the FDA when it comes to bottled water, which says more about the lack of action from the FDA than it does the state of California. Water that is bottled outside of California doesn't have to meet the state's safety standards to be sold there. Though, personally, when it comes to drinking water I want the best water quality possible.

According to the EWG study Walmart representatives acknowledged that Las Vegas tap water was the source for some of their bottled water. This easily explains how disinfection byproducts, like trihalomethanes, were found in their bottled water. Trihalomethanes are the result of a naturally occurring chemical reaction between chlorine and waterborne contaminants, so it isn't unusual to find the contaminant in tap water that is disinfected with chlorine. Of course, the marketing of bottled water products leads you to believe that the water is more than just ordinary tap water.

If you look at the label on bottled water you will usually see a lot of 0's. 0 grams of sugar, 0 grams of fat, etc. The bottled water industry uses this tactic to make you think their drinking water is more "pure" and safer than tap water. Trihalomethanes are not safe to drink and at higher concentrations have been linked to cancer and birth defects. Not all bottled water is created equal. The EWG believes that the FDA needs to crack down on the misleading labeling and marketing of bottled water as a safer way to drink water. As the article points out "Consumers could have obtained much better drinking water simply by installing a home tap water filter at a fraction of the bottled water cost."

At the end of the day the message is to make sure you know what's in your water. Take control of your drinking water quality and consider filtering and bottling your own water (preferably in a reusable bottle). At least this way you can be sure exactly what you are putting in your body when you take that first refreshing sip of water.

Winston the Water Fountain

Today I thought we could have a little fun with water. The man in the video, Winston, appears to be putting on a show for tourists. He makes a point of showing he has nothing up his sleeve (well to be exact, his shirt) and proceeds to display a pretty amazing capacity to dispense water like a fountain. I have not been able to figure out what trick he could be using and think his performance is 100% authentic. So, real or fake, what do you think? I realize that the quality isn't the best and that makes this challenge a little harder, but I would love to know what you think?

Posted on June 22, 2011 at 01:57 PM in Bottled Water, Drinking Water, Events | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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She may never get to be Darth Vader when dueling lightsabers with her son, but a quick check of her twitter profile reveals that @OpheliaRising is still "pretty badass with a lightsaber". When asked why she has to act out the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi she tells me it is because her daughter insists on always playing Padme while her son plays Anakin. Wait, she has lightsaber duels with her kids on the living room furniture? I wish my mom played Star Wars with me when I was growing up!

Becky Powell (the real world face behind @OpheliaRising on twitter and author of the blog "Alice in Motherland") plays quite a few roles at home including: wife, mother, writer, star wars re-enacter, and (my personal favorite) fellow Tarheel. I had been following her on Twitter for a few months when I was asked to interview her for the fridgefilters blog. Since her Twitter account is one of my favorite follows I was really excited to have the opportunity to learn more about the real Becky Powell.

One of the things you need to know about Becky is that she is incredibly smart (I did mention she graduated from UNC right?) and puts a lot of effort into taking care of her children. Naturally we spent a lot of time talking about her family and how to raise happy, healthy kids. When she and her husband found out they were going to have their first child they agreed to try and make the healthiest choices possible. Becky set out to learn as much as she could about how to take care of her child, "I read books, ate all the right stuff" she explains and even switched to drinking only bottled water. At the time there were a lot of people saying that tap water wasn't safe and her doctors were telling her to drink a lot of water.

According to Becky that is when she first started to think about the quality of the water she was drinking. Her family has always been very health conscious and so when her second child was born it was back to bottled water, because "it seemed like a healthy choice". She had read up on Bisphenol A and knew to only buy plastics that were BPA free, but then she started following @fridgefilters on twitter. "I read on your blog that BPA Free is not the only toxin in plastics and the thing that really worried me is that they can leach estrogen disruptors". Now she tries to use less plastic, but if you have ever had a baby you know that avoiding plastics is not an easy job.

"Have you ever been to a Babies 'R Us? It's like the evil baby stuff Wal Mart," she tells me "they have everything for babies and so much of it is plastic." To make matters worse for a young health conscious mother she explains they also have a "huge display of Nursery Water, which is steamed, distilled, boiled water with fluoride added." Why put fluoride in water for babies for their formula when the babies teeth haven't even emerged yet? Oh, and Nursery Water also comes in large plastic containers. Which reminds me, never mess with a mom, especially not an informed one.

So Becky and her husband stopped buying plastic water bottles and switched to tap water. Their refrigerator had a water dispenser with a filter so they started using only water from their fridge. What she did not do was remember to change the water filter in her refrigerator. Ironically, Becky explains to me that her husband works in heating and air and often has to remind homeowners to change their air filters. It is really easy to forget to change your fridge's water filter, but you really can taste the difference. Becky found that out recently when she got a new water filter and "within a day I felt that our water tastes better. Now our kids are drinking a lot more water. Our kids don't drink a lot of soda, they drink juices and things like that, but I used to have to flavor their water to get them to drink it...now they are okay with drinking it straight from the fridge". The best part is that her whole family is no longer drinking from PET plastic bottles.

There are so many resources available now trying to tell you how to raise your kids and there is no way you can do them all. I asked Becky what her advice would be for other moms. Focus on the things you can control, "for me it is all about making incremental changes for me and my families health." A very special thanks to Becky for taking the time to share her story with me today. You can follow her on Twitter @OpheliaRising and on her blog at "Alice in Motherland".

Want to save money? Want to help the planet out? Try one of these green-friendly bottles recommended by Time.com. Single use PET plastic bottles are not the best way to get your water. For one thing, you would not want to refill a PET plastic bottle to reuse it as a drinking bottle because over time the stress placed on the bottle makes it more likely to leach harmful chemicals (like endocrine disruptors) into your water. So not only are these chemicals endocrine disruptors (that means bad for your body's natural hormone production), but they also add a bad taste to the water.

If that did not convince you to put down that Aquafina, Dasani, or Fiji water check this out. At around $1.50 or more per bottle and drinking at least 1 bottle a day you will spend around $500 - $600 on bottle water in a year. Of course you could just get a handy re-usable bottle like one of the ones from the Time.com article and save yourself a lot of cash. You will also be helping to cut down on energy use, plastic pollution, and keeping our planet green.

Of course, we have a favorite green-friendly bottle at FridgeFilters and while all the ones on the Time list sound great, I would personally go with a stainless steel Klean Kanteen bottle. There are a lot of stainless steel bottles on the market now, but the Klean Kanteen is still the best because they are responsibly manufactured by an American company using 100% BPA free materials and food grade stainless steel. If you are looking for more options they also have a line of stylish stainless steel bottles that come in cool colors like Eclipse Black, Indicator Red, or Be Green. These great bottles also come in different sizes, styles and have a variety of cap options. Because they are made of stainless steel the Klean Kanteens are extremely durable and easy to clean too!

Or as Aretha Franklin would say "R.E.S.P.E.C.T. find out what it means to"...water? Yes, especially when it comes to water. In developed nations our expectation for water is that it will always be available and it should always be cheap. While I agree wholeheartedly with these ideas the situation is a little more complicated than that.

In this article written by Kit Roane for CNN about Charles Fishman's new book The Big Thirst - The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water he discusses the author's views on respecting our water supply. Fishman believes that our expectations for cheap water are causing problems that will endanger the future of our water system. For example, we protest against increases in the cost of water from the utility company, but willingly fork over far more per liquid ounce to buy a cheap plastic bottle. According to Fishman we spend as much per year buying bottled water (over $20 billion) than we do "on sustaining the entire water system of the country." The result is overburdened water systems that are relying on old and often leaking pipelines to deliver public water.

Rather than invest in bottled water and hand over our hard earned money to private corporate giants like Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, and Danone, we should be investing more money into the water system to ensure that cheap water is still available in the future. Fishman points out that India's water system was working fine in 1947, but now excessive pollution of water supplies and a failure to invest appropriately in municipal water services has made access to clean water from the tap a thing of the past for many people living there.

Fishman also points out some positive changes that have been made by forward looking cities and companies to reduce their water consumption and recapture and reuse water whenever possible. This is not necessarily a victory for green friendly water use, but a function of reducing the cost to operate. If water contamination continues at current rates the cost to purify water and return it to a drinkable state will continue to rise. The more expensive water becomes the more we will think about how we are using it instead of taking it for granted. It has been said that water is the new oil, which is a scary thought. We need to take the right steps now to protect out water supply. We need to stop dumping waste into water supplies and contaminating groundwater and invest in the infrastructure of public water. All it takes is a little respect for our water.

Becky Powell on Lightsaber Duels and Raising Healthy Kids

She may never get to be Darth Vader when dueling lightsabers with her son, but a quick check of her twitter profile reveals that @OpheliaRising is still "pretty badass with a lightsaber". When asked why she has to act out the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi she tells me it is because her daughter insists on always playing Padme while her son plays Anakin. Wait, she has lightsaber duels with her kids on the living room furniture? I wish my mom played Star Wars with me when I was growing up!

Becky Powell (the real world face behind @OpheliaRising on twitter and author of the blog "Alice in Motherland") plays quite a few roles at home including: wife, mother, writer, star wars re-enacter, and (my personal favorite) fellow Tarheel. I had been following her on Twitter for a few months when I was asked to interview her for the fridgefilters blog. Since her Twitter account is one of my favorite follows I was really excited to have the opportunity to learn more about the real Becky Powell.

One of the things you need to know about Becky is that she is incredibly smart (I did mention she graduated from UNC right?) and puts a lot of effort into taking care of her children. Naturally we spent a lot of time talking about her family and how to raise happy, healthy kids. When she and her husband found out they were going to have their first child they agreed to try and make the healthiest choices possible. Becky set out to learn as much as she could about how to take care of her child, "I read books, ate all the right stuff" she explains and even switched to drinking only bottled water. At the time there were a lot of people saying that tap water wasn't safe and her doctors were telling her to drink a lot of water.

According to Becky that is when she first started to think about the quality of the water she was drinking. Her family has always been very health conscious and so when her second child was born it was back to bottled water, because "it seemed like a healthy choice". She had read up on Bisphenol A and knew to only buy plastics that were BPA free, but then she started following @fridgefilters on twitter. "I read on your blog that BPA Free is not the only toxin in plastics and the thing that really worried me is that they can leach estrogen disruptors". Now she tries to use less plastic, but if you have ever had a baby you know that avoiding plastics is not an easy job.

"Have you ever been to a Babies 'R Us? It's like the evil baby stuff Wal Mart," she tells me "they have everything for babies and so much of it is plastic." To make matters worse for a young health conscious mother she explains they also have a "huge display of Nursery Water, which is steamed, distilled, boiled water with fluoride added." Why put fluoride in water for babies for their formula when the babies teeth haven't even emerged yet? Oh, and Nursery Water also comes in large plastic containers. Which reminds me, never mess with a mom, especially not an informed one.

So Becky and her husband stopped buying plastic water bottles and switched to tap water. Their refrigerator had a water dispenser with a filter so they started using only water from their fridge. What she did not do was remember to change the water filter in her refrigerator. Ironically, Becky explains to me that her husband works in heating and air and often has to remind homeowners to change their air filters. It is really easy to forget to change your fridge's water filter, but you really can taste the difference. Becky found that out recently when she got a new water filter and "within a day I felt that our water tastes better. Now our kids are drinking a lot more water. Our kids don't drink a lot of soda, they drink juices and things like that, but I used to have to flavor their water to get them to drink it...now they are okay with drinking it straight from the fridge". The best part is that her whole family is no longer drinking from PET plastic bottles.

There are so many resources available now trying to tell you how to raise your kids and there is no way you can do them all. I asked Becky what her advice would be for other moms. Focus on the things you can control, "for me it is all about making incremental changes for me and my families health." A very special thanks to Becky for taking the time to share her story with me today. You can follow her on Twitter @OpheliaRising and on her blog at "Alice in Motherland".

Green friendly water bottles

Want to save money? Want to help the planet out? Try one of these green-friendly bottles recommended by Time.com. Single use PET plastic bottles are not the best way to get your water. For one thing, you would not want to refill a PET plastic bottle to reuse it as a drinking bottle because over time the stress placed on the bottle makes it more likely to leach harmful chemicals (like endocrine disruptors) into your water. So not only are these chemicals endocrine disruptors (that means bad for your body's natural hormone production), but they also add a bad taste to the water.

If that did not convince you to put down that Aquafina, Dasani, or Fiji water check this out. At around $1.50 or more per bottle and drinking at least 1 bottle a day you will spend around $500 - $600 on bottle water in a year. Of course you could just get a handy re-usable bottle like one of the ones from the Time.com article and save yourself a lot of cash. You will also be helping to cut down on energy use, plastic pollution, and keeping our planet green.

Of course, we have a favorite green-friendly bottle at FridgeFilters and while all the ones on the Time list sound great, I would personally go with a stainless steel Klean Kanteen bottle. There are a lot of stainless steel bottles on the market now, but the Klean Kanteen is still the best because they are responsibly manufactured by an American company using 100% BPA free materials and food grade stainless steel. If you are looking for more options they also have a line of stylish stainless steel bottles that come in cool colors like Eclipse Black, Indicator Red, or Be Green. These great bottles also come in different sizes, styles and have a variety of cap options. Because they are made of stainless steel the Klean Kanteens are extremely durable and easy to clean too!

A little respect for water please

Or as Aretha Franklin would say "R.E.S.P.E.C.T. find out what it means to"...water? Yes, especially when it comes to water. In developed nations our expectation for water is that it will always be available and it should always be cheap. While I agree wholeheartedly with these ideas the situation is a little more complicated than that.

In this article written by Kit Roane for CNN about Charles Fishman's new book The Big Thirst - The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water he discusses the author's views on respecting our water supply. Fishman believes that our expectations for cheap water are causing problems that will endanger the future of our water system. For example, we protest against increases in the cost of water from the utility company, but willingly fork over far more per liquid ounce to buy a cheap plastic bottle. According to Fishman we spend as much per year buying bottled water (over $20 billion) than we do "on sustaining the entire water system of the country." The result is overburdened water systems that are relying on old and often leaking pipelines to deliver public water.

Rather than invest in bottled water and hand over our hard earned money to private corporate giants like Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, and Danone, we should be investing more money into the water system to ensure that cheap water is still available in the future. Fishman points out that India's water system was working fine in 1947, but now excessive pollution of water supplies and a failure to invest appropriately in municipal water services has made access to clean water from the tap a thing of the past for many people living there.

Fishman also points out some positive changes that have been made by forward looking cities and companies to reduce their water consumption and recapture and reuse water whenever possible. This is not necessarily a victory for green friendly water use, but a function of reducing the cost to operate. If water contamination continues at current rates the cost to purify water and return it to a drinkable state will continue to rise. The more expensive water becomes the more we will think about how we are using it instead of taking it for granted. It has been said that water is the new oil, which is a scary thought. We need to take the right steps now to protect out water supply. We need to stop dumping waste into water supplies and contaminating groundwater and invest in the infrastructure of public water. All it takes is a little respect for our water.