https://padlet.com/zev_jagalur/jw9hdtifuk8 Is clean water a right or a commodity? en-us 2016-11-30 22:11:17 UTC 2016-12-05 05:03:32 UTC hello@padlet.com zev_jagalur https://padlet.com/zev_jagalur/jw9hdtifuk8/wish/140981574 The documentary we saw today is so far very good. A few key points it has made are:
There is a small town in Maine called Fryeburg, where a giant multinational company is taking advantage of lax laws. The company is Nestle, and it is based in Switzerland. It is doing water mining in various small towns in Maine. The local people in Fryeburg are trying to fight it. It is a question of water rights, and who controls it. In that state whoever has the deepest and biggest pump can have the right to the water, which seems unfair. This water is bottled and sold under different names like Poland Spring. City folks elsewhere in the country get to drink the water, and Nestle gets rich, but the locals get nothing. Nestle is getting the water for  free and they are selling it for an obscene profit. 
In  North Carolina and  Georgia, big soda companies are using up municipal water supplies and groundwater even when there are droughts. In Atlanta, we saw how the water in the lake had diminished. The locals and local small businesses have to abide by water conservation rules - yet, Coca Cola can keep using millions of gallons of water - even during a drought.  
Bottled water has become big business, and is very profitable. In the film, someone called it "blue gold". Companies started marketing it as being better than tap water.  They used words like "pure" - implying that it was cleaner than tap water.
- The production of bottled water creates  toxic chemical byproducts that cause horrible diseases such as cancer. In the film, we see several unfortunate people who live near Flint Hills - which is in Corpus Christi, Texas. They are suffering health issues because of a petrochemical plant there which makes an ingredient used in manufacturing bottles. 
- Forty percent of bottled water is really  just filtered tap water resold for profit when it was extracted for practically free.
- When we treat our water as a commodity it becomes corporate controlled. It should be a human right.

--The water companies are reselling water that belongs to all of us ! Mahatma Gandhi once said "There is enough water for human need but not for human greed." TOO TRUE.


]]> 2016-11-30 22:21:33 UTC https://padlet.com/zev_jagalur/jw9hdtifuk8/wish/140981574 zev_jagalur https://padlet.com/zev_jagalur/jw9hdtifuk8/wish/141622564 Today the documentary concluded. It was even better, if that's possible. I learned many things I did not know.
There are contaminants in bottled water. There is little or no oversight and monitoring of bottled water.They did some independent testing of different companies' water bottles, and the results were shocking. They found some dangerous chemicals in some. These were chemicals like Toluene , Styrene, etc. In the hard clear water coolers, they found BPA, which is dangerous to humans.It is linked to various diseases.
    The film also talks about the amount of garbage the water bottles are producing. They showed some scientists going out on a boat in the middle of the ocean - and when they take samples, they find "plastic soup". In other words, the huge amounts of garbage that are being washed out into the oceans are ending up being consumed by fish and other sea creatures. There is a scientist who goes to a beach down south- and the beach is totally polluted with plastic. It is quite gross. He holds out a handful of plastic "sand". I remember there was a seal with a plastic water bottle in its mouth. 
 The film maker seems to be saying that if we have bottle laws in every state, we can cut down on the amount of plastic bottles that end up in landfills or the oceans. Also, if there is a deposit required, there is a higher percentage of bottles which are returned for recycling. This is an issue since millions of bottles end up in landfills.
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-The FDA is being pressured into ignoring bottled water related problems. Only one person at the FDA is looking at the water bottling industry - part time.
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-All approval from FDA comes from industry studies.
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]]> 2016-12-04 20:52:02 UTC https://padlet.com/zev_jagalur/jw9hdtifuk8/wish/141622564