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Couture Bottled Water
This reusable frosted-glass water bottle bedazzled with Swarovski Crystals brings you your daily h2o fix for a mere $20 for 375 ml.
The philosophy...
"While working on various studio lots where image is the utmost importance he noticed you can tell a lot about a person by the bottled water they carried."
Where does this h2o come from?
Dandrige, Tennesse
Words can't even describe how ridiculous this is. This reusable frosted-glass water bottle bedazzled with Swarovski Crystals brings you your daily h2o fix for a mere $20 for 375 ml. ... more -
Japanese invent car that runs on water
Tired of petrol prices rising daily at the pump? A Japanese company has invented an electric-powered, and environmentally friendly, car that it says runs solely on water.
Genepax unveiled the car in the western city of Osaka on Thursday, saying that a liter (2.1 pints) of any kind of water -- rain, river or sea -- was all you needed to get the engine going for about an hour at a speed of 80 km (50 miles).
"The car will continue to run as long as you have a bottle of water to top up from time to time," Genepax CEO Kiyoshi Hirasawa told local broadcaster TV Tokyo.
"It does not require you to build up an infrastructure to recharge your batteries, which is usually the case for most electric cars," he added.
Once the water is poured into the tank at the back of the car, the a generator breaks it down and uses it to create electrical power, TV Tokyo said.
Whether the car makes it into showrooms remains to be seen. Genepax said it had just applied for a patent and is hoping to collaborate with Japanese auto manufacturers in the future.
Most big automakers, meanwhile, are working on fuel-cell cars that run on hydrogen and emit -- not consume -- water. Tired of petrol prices rising daily at the pump? A Japanese company has invented an electric-powered, and environmentally friendly, ca... more -
Water-Thirsty Golf Courses Need to Go Green
Audubon International estimates that the average American course uses 312,000 gallons per day. In a place like Palm Springs, where 57 golf courses challenge the desert, each course eats up a million gallons a day. That is, each course each day in Palm Springs consumes as much water as an American family of four uses in four years. Audubon International estimates that the average American course uses 312,000 gallons per day. In a place like Palm Springs, where 57 ... more
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Troubled waters: Lake Victoria
East Africa's Lake Victoria is the world's largest tropical lake — but some experts think it may disappear within twenty years.
Water levels have dropped dramatically in recent years thanks to climate change, hydroelectric dam projects and increasing pressure on the lake's threatened resources. The crisis endangers the livelihood of the more than 30 million people who rely on the lake for food and work. East Africa's Lake Victoria is the world's largest tropical lake — but some experts think it may disappear within twenty yea... more -
Boy Dies Of Dry Drowning An Hour After Swimming
ohnny Jackson, a 10-year-old American boy from South Carolina, died at home on Sunday from "dry drowning" more than an hour after going swimming and walking home with his mother. The sad event highlights a little known danger that parents and child carers should be aware of, that drowning can kill hours after being submersed in water.
According to the latest figures, about 3,600 Americans died from drowning in 2005, said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including a small percentage that die up to 24 hours later because of water entering the respiratory system. A not insignificant number of the victims are children who died after having a bath. ohnny Jackson, a 10-year-old American boy from South Carolina, died at home on Sunday from "dry drowning" more than an hour ... more -
Is water becoming the new oil?
Public fountains are dry in Barcelona, Spain, a city so parched there’s a €9,000 ($13,000) fine if you’re caught watering your flowers. A tanker ship docked there this month carrying 5 million gallons of precious fresh water – and officials are scrambling to line up more such shipments to slake public thirst.
Barcelona is not alone. Cyprus will ferry water from Greece this summer. Australian cities are buying water from that nation’s farmers and building desalination plants. Thirsty China plans to divert Himalayan water. And 18 million southern Californians are bracing for their first water-rationing in years.
Water, Dow Chemical Chairman Andrew Liveris told the World Economic Forum in February, “is the oil of this century.” Developed nations have taken cheap, abundant fresh water largely for granted. Now global population growth, pollution, and climate change are shaping a new view of water as “blue gold.”
Water’s hot-commodity status has snared the attention of big equipment suppliers like General Electric as well as big private water companies that buy or manage municipal supplies – notably France-based Suez and Aqua America, the largest US-based private water company.
Global water markets, including drinking water distribution, management, waste treatment, and agriculture are a nearly $500 billion market and growing fast, says a 2007 global investment report.
But governments pushing to privatize costly to maintain public water systems are colliding with a global “water is a human right” movement. Because water is essential for human life, its distribution is best left to more publicly accountable government authorities to distribute at prices the poorest can afford, those water warriors say.
“We’re at a transition point where fundamental decisions need to be made by societies about how this basic human need – water – is going to be provided,” says Christopher Kilian, clean-water program director for the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation. “The profit motive and basic human need [for water] are just inherently in conflict.”
Will “peak water” displace “peak oil” as the central resource question? Some see such a scenario rising.
end of excerpted article noted in entry.
My comments;
This is a scenario that some including myself have been warning about for the last twenty years. The prognosis that increasing population and lack of proper maintenance of infrastructure along with destructive corporate policies that pollute and waste this precious resource will culminate to bring us to a point where there will not be enough potable water to sustain this world's population.
snip
The water justice movement in this world is now just starting to make headway with bringing people to that consciousness regarding water and the impending repercussions we will most certainly face upon not giving this crisis the attention and action it deserves on a global scale. Drought (caused by waste but now also caused predominantly by climate change and the burning of fossil fuels at a rapacious pace unprecedented) is a silent killer that is creeping across this planet very stealthily in search of more land to suck dry, which is now putting the lives of millions in the Horn of Africa and in other parts of this world including the United States at risk. And in that process, where will that leave the poorest in our world? At the mercy of corporate conglomerates that will charge them unsurious rates to have a substance they cannot live without? How can anyone claim this is even moral let alone legal?
more at the link. Public fountains are dry in Barcelona, Spain, a city so parched there’s a €9,000 ($13,000) fine if you’re caught watering your flowers... more -
Water Wars In Africa
While Americans fret over rising gas prices and global tension over oil, the world’s poor are struggling to secure access to another, even more basic resource. Water scarcity in East Africa is fueling conflict and thwarting development while growing in step with local populations and rising global temperatures. While Americans fret over rising gas prices and global tension over oil, the world’s poor are struggling to secure access to another, ... more
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End Water Poverty
This charity is working to bring clean water to the people living in poverty. It is a crisis that is killing as many as 50,00 children a day - the equivalent of 20 airliners filled with children lost everyday to an entirely preventable public health crisis, 1.1 billion lack access to clean water, 2.6 billion lack access to basic sanitation. It is a crisis driven by inequality and poverty, where the burden falls most heavily on women. It is girls who are denied an education because they are tasked with fetching water or drop out of school in adolescence because of inadequate sanitation facilities. And as adults, women continue to waste hours each day in the search for water and inevitably look after the children that are ill or dying from diarrhoeal diseases. It is a crisis that hampers economic growth and an entire generation. This charity is working to bring clean water to the people living in poverty. It is a crisis that is killing as many as 50,00 children... more
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End Water Poverty | WaterAid
Add your voice to the End Water Poverty campaign's demand that governments provide sanitation and water for the world's poorest people.
End Water Poverty is calling for:
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One global action plan for sanitation and water monitored by one global task force
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70% of aid money for sanitation and water to be targeted at the poorest countries
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Water resources to be protected and shared equitably
You can help today by telling the G8 leaders to urgently address the crisis in sanitation and water at their next summit in Japan in July 2008.... continued on link.
From TouchArt.net and OneEarthBlog. Add your voice to the End Water Poverty campaign's demand that governments provide sanitation and water for the world's poor... more -
No more polycarbonate
As quoted from the article:
"Nalgene, the brand that popularized water bottles made from hard, clear and nearly unbreakable polycarbonate, will stop using the plastic because of growing concern over one of its ingredients." As quoted from the article: ... more -
Bottled Water: Killing The Planet
Want an easy way to help save this planet? Stop drinking bottled water.
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