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No more bottled water at their meetings
By adamg on Tue, 09/01/2009 - 8:43am
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is replacing bottled water with tap water in pitchers for meetings:
... I understand that part of the reason we have been serving bottled water instead of tap has to do with the misperception that our tap water is dirty and unsafe. Because this perception has more to do with the successful marketing campaigns of bottled water companies than reality we would like your help in supporting and promoting this shift to a more environmentally sustainable model. This shift will be successful if we work together to educate our meeting participants.
What folks should know is that tap water is at a minimum as clean and safe as bottled water but often it is cleaner and safer. ...
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Comments
Tap water
All tap water should taste like the tap water in Saratoga. Best ever.
I've always been a fan of
I've always been a fan of water but public water is always an after thought for some reason. When I was younger there would be coffee and juice at events but never water. Then the bottled water craze started and hit its stride the year I started college. Every event you went to had bottled water everywhere, and then they started with the little 4oz bottles! I can understand juice and soda in 4 ounce bottles but who drinks a shot of water?
When I was in charge of a club at my college we had a small budget and every time we wanted to run an event we had to do it through the colleges cafeteria/catering program. I thought the prices were insane and would be upset I could not just go to costco and buy some cheese, crackers and fruit myself. The worst offender was the drink options. They would recommend half of the drinks be bottled water which they charged $1.25 each for. When I asked about having pitchers with ice in them the answer was "we don't do that". Simply amazing.
I think part of the issue is
I think part of the issue is corporate catering. Most companies that I've worked for order lunch for meetings -- lunch for 10 with assorted beverages doesn't normally include the option of a pitcher of water in lieu of bottled.
remember when?
I've become as guilty as anyone in drinking bottled water, especially when I'm travelling. And there are still many valid concerns about the purity of tap water once it's been run through miles of city pipes.
Still, I'm glad to hear about this pushback on bottled water, and I think this is the start of a trend that may eventually steamroll. If I was holding a ton of stock in companies that make a big share of their profits on bottled water, I wouldn't be too happy right now....
I can still remember how incredulous I was, many moons ago, when I saw companies packaging and selling WATER. To my midwestern sensibilities, it just seemed like the most absurd concept. Right up there with fancy ice cream cones that cost a dollar or more!
Where some bottled water comes from
Framingham's largest water user is a Nestle plant - which "purifies" the water, then resells it at a huge markup.
Framingham gets its water from the same source as Beth Israel and much of the Boston area - the Quabbin reservoir (which, by the way, has no atrizine in it, thanks to foresighted MDC managers who bought up all the land around it to keep it as forests).
Taste!
I felt the same, till I moved to Wellesley. Then I tried to drink the water. FOUL. No Brita pitcher could help. And the toilets and sinks all built up a greenish cast; it was chemically reacting with the pipes somehow.
I finally ended up installing a series of whole-house filters and even a softener. (I didn't do RO, because I hate the way that tastes.) Suddenly, my water tasted like Poland Springs! Naturally, within a year Wellesley had upgraded its water supply, and I hear it tastes fine now.
In Cambridge, it's perfectly drinkable from the tap, but I don't know if my building has filters up front.
yeah, the taste matters
At home I run all my drinking water through a Brita filter, and it makes a big difference. Both for drinking and those lunar eclipse frequency times I "cook." During the past couple of years I've been filling up a plastic bottle with that water to carry around in my backpack, instead of plunking down a dollar or two every few days to buy new bottled water.
I'm tapped out
The water tastes OK unfiltered to me, but then, I grew up on NYC tap water so what do I know? :-).
We do run the water for a minute or so first thing in the morning - all that lead soldering from when the place was built in 1929 and all.
In Cambridge
Your building probably doesn't have any filters. Go visit the water-treatment facility at Fresh Pond. They have open-house tours periodically -- I think just during the summer. They're quite proud of the quality of Cambridge water.
Cambridge water
I'm glad that they're proud of the quality of Cambridge water now. I lived in Cambridge 1977-80 and the water was undrinkable - so heavily chlorinated that it smelled of bleach. Brookline 1980-84 wasn't much better. Since then, I've been very happy to be back in Boston where the tap water tastes just fine!
Brookline water is Boston water is Quabbin water
Both municipalities get their water from the same place -- MWRA's reservoir system. So I don't see how it can taste any different.
Only Cambridge has its own separate water system and reservoirs.
No MWRA back then
The MWRA was formed in 1985 after the feds got fed up with Boston ignoring the clean water laws (and a judge stepped in poop on the beach in Quincy). The MWRA took over control of the water system from that massive untreated pile of incompetence known as the MDC.
This was after the time period specified in the original comment.
Don't confuse water and sewer
The main problem with the old MDC water system was not quality, but lack of a backup - one aqueduct supplied 85% of the water coming into greater Boston and it had never been shut down in 50 years for repairs and it was leaking. The MWRA built a new aqueduct.
Quality differed by town
The MWRA has also been systematically replacing supply lines within the towns, which were also leaking out as much as 50% of the water that was pumped into the area. These old pipes required much higher levels of disinfection, and some were even wood logs that gave the water its own distinctive taste.
The MWRA has also done a much better job of using best practices for disinfection and chlorination.
Right, the leaky mains
Thanks for reminding me. That was really more an issue of deferred maintenance on the parts of the cities and towns that connect MWRA mains to residents and businesses, but the MWRA did a good job working with them to upgrade their systems..
Brookline = Boston
Maybe it was my building's plumbing, then, but the water in my Brookline apartment was definitely not enjoyable to drink plain. For that matter, the water fountain water throughout Boston Medical Center wasn't very nice, either, and it was Quabbin water too, but clearly it picked up off flavors inside the buildings' water system.
What's a water fountain?
What's a water fountain? Around her we call it a bubbler!
Bubbler, water fountain, whatever
Sorry, I haven't called it a bubbler since high school, and I haven't actually heard (as in, with my ears, not in a discussion of local dialect) anyone refer to a water fountain as a bubbler in about 30 years.
I heard it last week!
When the guard in charge of jury duty at Dorchester District Court apologized for the lack of a bubbla in the jury room. And she seemed fairly young.
Well there you go
Huh. That's actually kind of cool. Thing is, hardly anyone in my part of Allston, or anyplace I've worked in the past 30 years, or any of my friends, is native townie Bostonian, so I just don't hear or use the old dialect anymore.
I heard "bubbler" used last week too
At a clinic at MGH -- also a youngish speaker. In this case, specifically for a bottled water dispenser.
Should I start calling
Should I start calling sneakers tennis shoes then?
Then kudos
They should be proud of it; it tastes great, and my ice cubes are nice and clear. It's definitely not over-chlorinated, either, 'cause if it was I wouldn't get that pink ring around the drain when I get too lazy to clean the sink.
I will drink tap water at
I will drink tap water at home, but when I am at a meeting or out and about I will always choose a bottle of water over a soda any day. Water fountains are just too gross!
I probably won't be drinking
I probably won't be drinking tap water in Milford or Gloucester anymore.
http://www.wbz.com/pages/5057303.php?
This is Great!
I'm so happy about this. Bottled water is a scam. A dumb scam, too!