Saturday, July 13, 2013
Amazingly wasteful
Statistic in the news today: Americans pay $12 billion for bottled water.
How does that compare with tap water? Those stats are harder to find. The closest I could get was a total revenue of $40 billion for all municipal water systems, of which 60% is household. So households spend $24 billion for water, of which 16% is listed as "faucet". Presumably that includes drinking, cooking, washing hands, and dishwashing for those of us** who don't have dishwashing machines. 16% of 24 = $3.8 billion spent for "faucet". Generously assume $3 bn of that is drinking. (In my own usage, I'd guess drinking is only 1/8 of "faucet".)
Result: We're spending 4 times as much for bottled water as for tap water. What do you get for 4 times as much? Damned if I know. A label?
How big are those bottles in landfills if uncrushed? Crudely estimating, each bottle costs a dollar, 4 bottles make a cubic foot, so 3 billion cuft per year = about 100 cubic miles per year.
= = = = =
**While I'm thinking of it: Pretty sure I've never used a dishwasher. My parents never had one, and I've never had one in the apartments and houses I rented or owned. I might have used a DW once when I was house-sitting for an aunt, but I don't recall the feeling of actually running the machine. More likely I just washed manually to avoid making expensive mistakes with an unfamiliar gadget.
¶ 12:04 PM 
Result: We're spending 4 times as much for bottled water as for tap water. What do you get for 4 times as much? Damned if I know. A label?
How big are those bottles in landfills if uncrushed? Crudely estimating, each bottle costs a dollar, 4 bottles make a cubic foot, so 3 billion cuft per year = about 100 cubic miles per year.
= = = = =
**While I'm thinking of it: Pretty sure I've never used a dishwasher. My parents never had one, and I've never had one in the apartments and houses I rented or owned. I might have used a DW once when I was house-sitting for an aunt, but I don't recall the feeling of actually running the machine. More likely I just washed manually to avoid making expensive mistakes with an unfamiliar gadget.
¶ 12:04 PM
