Canada's big problem is clearly Hudson's Bay.Perhaps if we re-named it, it would go away>?

Canadian universities are moving in that direction. The University of Winniped has banned the sale of bottled water, and other campuses are considering it.

I wonder if the decision makers at UW stopped to consider that allowing each student the freedom to make his or her own decision about such matters is, in and of itself, a valuable thing - that personal choice is something precious.

I'm guessing not. Individual freedom is considered a tool of oppression on most campuses these days.

I wonder if banning bottled water would increase the sales of soda pop, thereby (1) preventing improvements to the environment, and (2) increasing obesity and all the health problems associated with it?

See, that's the problem with social engineers. None of them seem to expect the law of unexpected consequences. Thus the name, I guess.

It's a couple years old but the United Church has already BTDT.

(I'm sorry, I don't mean to bring religion into another thread... *ducks*)

Nice kick in the pants to the boy's over there Kate.
Just another example of how reason or logic is thrown out the widow for wishful emotism, not facts. Unicorns With fairy dust hopes, by those who should know better.
JMO

Ahhhh yes.But that artificial colour,flavour,and carbonization carry a BIG money stick.Same as ALL other socialist/big brother scams....follow the money.
As to the absurdity,when you think(?) and run solely on emotions,nothing is absurd.

The thread below was about religion. This thread is about a cult. No matter how strange the practices, beliefs and rituals of mainstream religions they are nothing compared to the dogmatic adherence to the theology of green. The science is settled - questioners are deniers of the TRUTH. Greenies know what is good for you so shut up and be thankful for their enlightened stewardship of the planet.

Journalists who sneer at the religious beliefs of a Harper, Bush or Palin are only too happy to wholeheartedly adopt the theology of the GREEN - facts be damned.

SDH,
That's ok, the United Church is no longer religion.

This guy calls himself a conservative?

I SO want to kick him out of the tree house!

This guy's a Twit with a capital T.
Being able to bottle something that is in readily available for free and sell it for three times the unit price gasoline is what makes Western society great! That and air conditioning.

Jay said "the United Church is no longer a religion". True, it is now a social activist club some of whose "ministers" no longer even believe in God.

Inconvenient Waterbottle
It's OK for me.
http://www.rodedwards.ca/about/

Was there an oxymoron contest?
"Smart Government" as if !

I left a note at Rod's site. I'm afraid the poor man doesn't realize what he's in the grip of, but Nietzsche said it better:

Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.

Rod doesn't realize he's in love with power. When he does, maybe he'll be able to reform.

FWIW, I helped build a new Coca Cola bottling plant in Mississauga a few years ago. They made Coke and Dasani, among other products. Dasani is one of the more popular brands of bottled water and it is made in the same plant in the same manner as Coke. City water is purified though the reverse osmosis process, then either syrop or mineral salts are added to it. Dasani is really a non carbonated, unflavoured soft drink.

lots of words at the other site. too bad we can't ban stupid.

Edwards is not thinking, merely overlaying his policy prejudices with pseudo-scientific rationalization. His problem stems from miss-applying the concept of “externality”. He, and like ilk, use externality as a synonym for “negative externality”.

A valid analysis would also factor in the “positive externalities”, as Kate has illustrated.

Keep in mind that bottled soft drinks are a form of carbon sequestration. Keeping all of that extra carbon dioxide out of the air reduces global warming... sorry... climate change I mean. Or is it global weirdness now?

Bottle water doesn't do that, so therefore it must be stopped.

Do you ever get the feeling these people just wake up and pick a random target just to see what damage they can accomplish?

Whatever works. I'm sooo fed up with the sight of trendies prancing around clutching their ubiquitous water bottles, so that they may 're-hydrate' every couple of minutes...and then desperately seek a loo almost as frequently.

How on Earth did we survive before the advent of plastic water bottles? And how did restaurants ever make a living before imported spring water?

Heh!..http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-08/dms-al080802.php

I hate to sound like everything is a conspiracy but there seems to be too much of this. It looks like the Commies are attacking free enterprise one business at a time.
Consider the frenzy on tobacco. No real scientific evidence on second hand smoke yet smokers are banned even in open air facilities.
The attempted ban on wearing fur and leather products.
The attempted closing of prime logging areas with accompanying violence.
The fantasy on bovine flatulence causing GW.
The Great Bear Rain Forest and banning of hunting one non-endangered animal at a time.
The violent protests at World Trade conferences.

The list goes on. Someone must have done a study on this? Any into?

Gunney, same crowd as gun control. Same tactics, same reasons for doing what they do. If it moves, ban it. If it doesn't move, tax it.

Concentration camp guards in training, basically. You know the type. They live in deadly fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time.

Kate,

Don't agree with the bans either. But your argument of airlifting water is weak. From what I've googled on the subject, the favoured approach is airlifting purification systems. My rough estimate is 40k gallons of bottled water (one time) is equal to 600k gallons per day in weight.

ural, as I mentioned on Red Rod's site the issues are A) time of response and B) self help vs. the loving hand out from Big Brother.

Yes one can re-tool pop factories to do water, but it takes a couple days to do it and a couple more to ship it. Plus like $10 million tax dollars. Plus Big Brother needs to get off the dime really quick, right?

Vs.mom and dad buying a couple extra cases of water at the store because the power went out for two days.

Btw, what's the bottling plant doing for electricity in an extended power outage? Dalton is going to pull a 5 megawatt portable generator out of his @ss?

Rod Edwards waves his hands and says "the environment comes first!!!" and the argument is over.

yes but, yes but, yes but . . . the clear stuff in the clear plastic bottles costs 1500 X as much as whut comes out of a tap !!!

(ignoring the fact anything packed for convenience has huge markups, plus you don't HAVE to buy evian, plus compare it with the relief from thirst after a 20 K full tilt excursion on the 10 speed etc etc.)

*&%$&$^$ blarsted political correctness.

☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺ ☺

The Phantom,

Not sure what you are saying. I just live a couple of klicks from the Coke plant, which bottles Vancouver water. I know someone that makes a good living trucking this water to Winnipeg. I have no problem with that.

I drink water from the tap. I have no problem with this. I think that that people that pay for stuff that is free (or you have already paid for) are stupid.

Just saying that in emergency situations - purification plants/kits are better/cheaper to ship than water. Heck, the hydrant 1/2 block down from the plant can supply more potable water than the plant will ever be able to.

When taking a look at this I discovered a nuclear powered aircraft carrier can distill (from seawater) 400k gallons of potable water a day. Neat.

"I wonder if banning bottled water would increase the sales of soda pop"

Exactly. Bottled water is not a substitute for tap water, as lefties seem to think. It is a substitute for soda or diet soda. Sure, you could keep a permanent water bottle in your car and fill it occasionally, but besides being a PIA, the plastic bottle begins to absorb smells after a pretty short while.

"Heck, the hydrant 1/2 block down from the plant can supply more potable water than the plant "

I am not sure whether including a reference to people who disagree with you being stupid was intended to tip the irony in your post, or you really are that ignorant. I lived through a hurricane caused major flood and the water supply was compromised for weeks. Setting up a purification facility and making people stand on line and wait for their ration of fresh water without alternatives sounds just like a lefty solution. Fortunately, in our case, a regional beer distributor canned water for us in beer cans and shipped it to us, this was before bottled water was a big item. It took a little time too, btw. Better to have the resource handy and ready to send out for people to drink while they wait for the purification facilities to be set up.

I am a little prejudiced on this subject, because my year on year weight gains only began to reverse when I substituted a cool refreshing, clean tasting, bottled water for my usual soda. This was while I lived in Florida, where tap water tastes like it was drawn directly from sun-baked, mud-bottomed, swamp puddles full of wigglers, and sits in the toilet yellow, looking like you just peed, no matter how many times you flush.

But you can tell the world how to live from Vancouver. Gawd I hate control freaks.

ural, Kate's point was that if the government -bans- the sale of bottled water, there won't be any stacks of it sitting around at Wallmart for people to buy when the hydrant down the street goes dry.

./engaging rant mode/.

You'll remember the Northeast Blackout of 2003, yes? Just extend that for a couple more days, there will be no water supply. Bottled will be it.

But there's no bottles sitting in warehouses! Because there's a ban! So now, how many water purification units do you have, and how fast can you get them out to every little town and city in the entire Northeastern USA and all of Canada east of Thunder Bay? Its hard to sail an aircraft carrier up to the dock in Hamilton Ontario, y'know.

Plus, now you have one single distribution point for X thousand people. They have to go there, with their own containers, they have to schlep the water home, you have to ration the water "fairly", there's going to be giant line ups (except in Rexdale, where there will be a mob scene) blah blah blah.

Kate's point is that bottled water is the perfect safety buffer for when things go wrong. Floods, blackouts, failure of the water system like at Walkerton, earthquakes in OutThereistan, there's tons and tons of nice clean water ready to go to where its needed, right now. Today.

But if these geniuses BAN bottled water, now there isn't any. And the factories and the distribution system that currently make it and move it around and store it, they won't be their either. They will be dismantled and carted off, or re-tooled to make something else.

Yes the beer and pop companies will still be there, but the extra capacity they used for bottled water will be gone. There will be no inventory of water. The bottling plant will have to gear up to do water, and build up inventory, and -then- it can go on trucks.

This assumes you've got power to run the plant. Which you might not, if the whole f-ing east half of the country is blacked out. Which we have seen -recently-, right?

Personally, I use bottled water. Because I live in the country, and my house has a cistern. Sour wells here, too much gas in the ground. Cisterns are known to grow nassssty things in them on occasion, so I filter the hell out of it and use BOTTLED WATER to drink because its clean. I could boil cistern water, but the 5 gallon bottles are cheaper and easier. Oh, and I have the water man deliver them too, just to twist the knife a little more.

Now, one nice thing for me is that when you city folk are f-ed for water because of whatever accident/problem/thing, if the water man runs out and there's no gasoline for the generator, I can still toss a bucket down the cistern and be all set.

You can't. Y'all get to stand in line. In the sun. Or the rain. Or the snow.

So banning bottled water because of some imagined eco-tastrophe is not in your best interests.

That was Kate's point.

My point is, since when is it the job of government to ban private companies from selling stuff as harmless and useful as WATER? That's Leftyism at its insane finest. I can't believe I even have to waste brain cycles on something that is so obviously f-ed in the head as a bottled water ban. Gawd.

You don't like bottled water, you think its a dumb idea? Kewl! Don't buy it. More for me.

/.disengage raging rant mode /.

www.aquasafestraw.com instead of bottles. Outrage solved. Disclaimer: And yes, they sent me a free one.