Fruit-flavored waters are a refreshing change of pace, especially during the hot summer months.

But there are several disadvantages to buying premade brands:

• Beverages may not be organic.
• Products are sold in glass jars or plastic bottles, which need to be recycled.
• Drinks may contain a fruit essence, but no real fruit. Some will contain sweeteners, which lead to consumption of empty calories.
• Ounce per ounce, they’re usually overpriced.

You can overcome these problems by creating your own fruit-infused water, and the Takeya Fruit Infusion Jug makes the job a snap. It’s glam enough for formal entertaining, yet practical enough for everyday use.

The 66-oz. airtight pitcher is made with Takeya’s proprietary AcraGlass, an FDA-approved, nontoxic, BPA-free acrylic that’s lightweight, stain- and odor-resistant, and dishwasher-safe.

Simply add your favorite water and organic fruit, whose flavors will meld naturally. When you’re ready to pour beverages, a built-in screen prevents pieces of fruit from dropping into glasses or mugs.

When you’ve finished serving and want to store leftovers, pop the pitcher in the refrigerator door or lay it on its side on a fridge shelf. 

Need a birthday or bridal gift? The aesthetically pleasing pitcher’s retail price is $27.50, and you may qualify for free shipping on Amazon.com.

Ever try to light your tap water on fire?

Josh Fox has witnessed the phenomenon firsthand (see photo, above).

The filmmaker chronicles the largest natural gas drilling boom in U.S. history in his documentary GasLand—and the environmental ramifications aren’t pretty. The film premiered on HBO last week and will air through 2012. (Click here to view the trailer.)

The film’s genesis was Fox’s discovery that natural gas drilling was about to start in the  Catskills/Poconos region of New York and Pennsylvania, where he lives. He was offered $100,000 to sign over drilling rights to his land.

Fox traveled to 24 states to expose how Dick Cheney’s pals at Halliburton developed a new drilling system called “fracking” (hydraulic fracturing), which may permanently contaminate the country’s water supply and worsen air pollution.

Chronically ill residents in drilling areas shared common symptoms and discovered that an urban legend held true: They could light fires straight from the faucet.

Drilling-related pools of toxic waste were also killing cattle and vegetation. Oil-well blowouts and gas explosions regularly occurred, only to be covered up by officials.

Not an HBO subscriber? A 2010 Sundance Film Festival award winner, GasLand will be available on DVD in December.

Photo courtesy of International WOW Company

That cartoon isn't just a coincidence, especially the part about the polluted water. Turns out, clean water violations are on the rise across the United States, with 10% of Americans being exposed to unhealthy drinking water. The culprit is agriculture and industrial practices and poor enforcement of regulations.

It all comes down to money. The Environmental Protection Agency recognizes the problem, saying today's water does not meet public health goals and enforcement is unacceptably low, but state officials are handcuffed by lack of funding. So in the meantime millions of people are unknowingly ingesting toxins.

Via The New York Times.

Image credit: Mean Joe Green

Image credit: ismaSan

The Environmental Working Group presented an 18-month study to a congressional oversight hearing about the gaps in government regulation of the bottled water industry.

Summing up the problem nicely is Wenonah Hauter, executive director of the non-profit consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch:

“The Bottled water industry's strategy has been to market bottled water as the safe and clean alternative to tap water…This myth has been used to trick consumers into paying thousands times more for a product that is the same or even more polluted than the water available from our faucets. Tap water in the United States undergoes rigorous testing for contaminants—as often as 480 times a month, far more than the once–a–week test for bottled water.”

FDA vs. EPA

Under the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, bottled water companies have complete latitude to choose what, if any, information to divulge to consumers about their water.

Compare that to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) -- the federal agency that oversees the nation’s municipal water utilities. All 52,000 nationwide community tap water suppliers need to produce an annual water quality report detailing the water source and pollutant testing results, as required under the Safe Drinking Water Act. (Although tap water does come with its own set of problems…)

Watered Down Labels

Furthermore, EWG researchers analyzed labels and websites from 188 bottled waters to learn which bottlers voluntarily disclosed the same information as required of community water suppliers. EWG found that many disclose little to no information at all on water source and purity.

What You Can Do

To sum it up, aqua junkies, I suggest that you:

• Buy a sturdy reusable water bottle which will save the on plastic waste and save you money
• Install a high quality water filtration system in your home

If you have to buy bottled, make it one that counts, like:

• Ethos: Available at Starbucks, this company gives .05 of every bottle to humanitarian water programs around the globe.
• Park City Ice Water: Uses 75% less energy to produce packaging than its counterparts
• Project 7: 50% of sales go to one of 7 critical areas including feeding the hungry, healing the sick, etc.
• Keeper Springs: Robert Kennedy’s own, all profits go to the environment

Stephen Colbert is very entertaining, but this is a serious issue. Drinking water is taking the brunt of American’s obsession with pills and chemicals. In March, depression medications were found in fish across the U.S., and in June artificial sweeteners, like saccharin, also washed up in water.

Via Colbert Nation.

Apparently, wiping too much is a major cause of global warming in the country.

Researchers claim putting a poem at eye-level of someone sitting on the bowl can actually reduce toilet paper usage by up to 20%.

And Japanese turd-smiths have crafted catchy snippets like, "Fold the paper over and over and over again," reports Reuters, or just "Love the toilet." The group behind the idea wants to post these sayings in 1,000 public toilets.

Now, the rise in the number of public bathrooms in Japan is being blamed for the increased usage of toilet paper. Since it’s free, people are more inclined to be wasteful. The pooper poems should help save water too. Holy crap!

Via Earth First.

Warming temperatures raise sea levels, threatening islands in the Pacific, and climate change increases the spread of deadly diseases, such as avian flu, cholera, tuberculosis and yellow fever. All of which harm humans.

And now, a new study claims global warming could starve 3 billion people by 2100. The majority of the victims will come from developing countries, but the effects might stretch as far as Europe and Russia.

Published in the journal Science, researchers believe there is a 90% chance 3 billion people will go hungry by the end of the century, due to dried up farmland and higher food prices, and the tropics and subtropics will be the hardest hit, where most of the denizens rely on locally grown crops. These regions could face their highest temperatures ever.

Scientists claim areas in the Sahara, like the Sahel Belt, a semi-arid region stretching across Africa, where farming employs 60% of the population, are at increased risk for desertification and drought, forcing people to move away, which will cripple the economy, where farming supplies 40% of the gross domestic product.

Industrialized nations are also at risk. Temperature changes in Europe and Russia have already impacted local harvests. Maize yields in Italy dropped 36%, France had a 50% cut in fruit production and in the USSR grain outputs dipped 13%, disrupting global grain prices.

And farmers in China are in trouble too. Climate change is threatening their water supplies.

Via NewScientist.

• Virgin paper: 390.7 liters of water and 80.3 kWh of energy consumption;

• Recycled paper: 153.4 liters of water and 31.4 kWh of energy consumed.

The EPA launched the WaterSense program last year to highlight high-efficiency products and services designed to conserve water, one of our most precious natural resources. This voluntary labeling program is available to all companies that partner with the EPA and manufacture, sell or distribute household plumbing fixtures.

The certification process consists of product testing, which ensures high-efficiency toilets consume no more than 1.28 gallons per flush, while successfully meeting all required performance testing. According to the EPA, the average household could save enough water to supply a year’s worth of drinking water to 150 of its neighbors.

Certified products will be included on an EPA product registry and will bear the WaterSense label. Ongoing annual inspections will ensure continued compliance. A more detailed list of requirements can be found here (PDF file).

The WaterSense program is expected to extend to high-efficiency bathroom sink faucets in the future, with possible expansion to showerheads, irrigation control equipment and other commercial equipment.

Additional water conservation tips for consumers can be found on NSF’s website.

Book Pick of the Day: Let’s Save Water