Eat This, Not That! took a look at what is found in bottled water.

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but for Americans and Japanese, what comes out of the tap is just as good if not better for you than what comes in the plastic bottles, and better for the environment, too! No recycling, no plastic, no contaminants!

Dasani of Coca-Cola is selling Philadelphia tap water that has been purified. The Natural Resources Defense Council found that about 22% of  brands tested contained contaminants ABOVE state health limits.

Let’s see, tap water that meets state, federal and local guidelines or trendy bottled water with fancy names that costs more than gasoline. Hmm…

I’ll put a purifier on my tap water and go with that and be kinder to the environment and my wallet as well. How about you?

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Del Posto, the famous Italian restaurant in New York, has joined the line-up of several restaurants in the city of San Francisco and the state of New York that are steering clear of bottled water.

At the Del Posto, which is backed by such restauranteer celebrities as Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich, diners can share an entree of wild branzino fish with roasted fennel and peperonata concentrato for $130 along with a bottle of Dom Perignon that will set you back $3,600. However, the very same diners cannot get bottled water …

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Canada’s scientists are busy mapping the underground water supplies across the country. The scientists want to provide policy makers with info to develop water conservation laws.

Image by esprit-de-sel

Canada is, for the first time, using such advanced tools as:

• computer modeling
• satellite imagery
• airborne geophysical surveys.

The last national mapping study of aquifers was in 1967.

The group has been at it since 2003. There are some 30 major aquifers across the country and 12 have been surveyed so far. At this rate, by the time they are finished it will be long past time to start over. Kind of like painting the Golden Gate Bridge.

So far the study has found some 100,000 cubic kilometers of water hidden in aquifers across the country.

I wonder if we can find water in other places across the globe this way, only faster.

Japan gets almost all of its oil from the Middle East and has nothing to give in return…except water.

Ultra dry Middle East needs water, (doesn’t everyone?) and must produce it from the salt water nearby. There’s a consortium including Hitachi Plant Technologies Ltd. and Toray Industries Inc. that is developing a desalination plant. That’s not new news. But the plant will use half as much power as existing facilities. That’s BIG news. Imagine, using less fossil fuels to produce electricity to desalinate.

Desalination Process

There is a group of 14 companies, including Kajima Corp. that will build a prototype this year. They will work together in such areas as membrane production and plant design. More energy savings will come from reworking the water-treatment process. The new process exceeds current quality standards.

The Middle East is the target of the consortium. From 2010, other countries wil be in their sites

“Every day, 1.1 billion people have to wash with, bathe in and drink dirty water.
That’s the same as the population of North America and Europe.
We can’t live with that fact. Can you?”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77Mv8pauMKc[/youtube]

After seeing this video I understood that there are places on Earth were people don’t have the time and the power to think about solar power, gas prices or car emissions. No food for tomorrow or water they can’t drink or shower with are bigger problems for them.

There’s not much I can do other than sharing this video with all the readers, friends or family.

This hard hitting viral video by World Vision wants to emphasize the fundamental importance of clean water for daily life, sanitation and hygiene. Everyone should have access to the basic human needs, don’t you think?

I am not pretending for a moment that Kenya is the kid and the U. S. or any other ‘developed’ nation is the adult. It’s the other way around. Kenyans have been here much longer than we ‘Westerners’.

However, the fact that the Kenyan government has a blue print for renewable energy – Kenya Energy Sector Environment Program (KEEP) - gives pause to wonder. It’s definitely the ‘under-developed‘ leading the ‘developed‘ no?

KEEP wants to -

1. phase out importing telephone poles
2. preserve the nation’s water catchment despite population pressure
3. remove existing barriers and constraints to adoption of efficiency and conservation technologies
4. begin switching from reliance on charcoal for fuel to promoting commercial tree growth
5. 85% of their planned new capacity to come from clean geothermal and hydro renewable sources

Go, Kenya, go!

Show the rest of the world how to do it.

Image by eir@si

The Phoenix Mars Mission is a true partnership between the government, academia and the industry that was designed to study the history of water and the habitabillity potential on the Martian arctic’s ice-rich soil.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TaP8YMM524[/youtube]

If everything goes as planned, on Sunday – May 25th, the Phoenix space craft is going to land on Mars. It will enter the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph and after finishing a set of events it should land on three “feet” at 5mph. Let’s hope everything will go smoothly and we’ll be able to find out more about the red planet.

If you want to be informed, this is NASA’s landing blog.

via Courier-Journal