Archive for July 24, 2018

Why You Should Probably Never Drink Bottled Water Again

The bottled water industry is about as wasteful as they come. This billion dollar industry is taking something that is essentially free around the world, packaging it, and selling it for profit. And it gets worse.

And 10 facts about the bottled water industry.

Nestlé — the same company that brings you those delicious Toll House cookies — decided in May to open a new plant in the middle of the drought-stricken desert in Arizona.

This decision has raised many concerns and questions, the most obvious being “how can they bottle water in a desert?”

Many of the concerned groups are environmental activists. Nestle already faces backlash from groups angry about them bottling water in the San Bernardino Mountains, and a group in Oregon voted in favor of anti-bottling measures on a proposed anti-bottling measures. Read more

Moon Water Made by the Sun?

Long thought to be bone dry, the moon has recently been confirmed as relatively water rich. But a big question remains: Where did the wet—or more accurately, icy—stuff come from?

A new study might have the answer: The moon’s water may have, in a sense, sailed in on the solar wind. The discovery hints at a previously unknown method of delivering water to the inner solar system—and a new way to produce water and rocket fuel for future space missions.

Solar particles may combine with oxygen in the lunar surface (file picture), creating water.

Until now the only known method of delivering water to inner solar system bodies such as Earth and the moon was through collisions with water-rich asteroids or comets from farther out in space—beyond the system’s “snow line,” where it’s cold enough for water to condense into ice.

But a team led by planetary scientist Yang Liu says it’s found another way, thanks to evidence of water and a water precursor molecule—hydroxyl—locked inside lunar soil samples brought to Earth by NASA astronauts. Water consists of two hydrogen atoms bound to one oxygen atom, while hydroxyl is one part hydrogen, one part oxygen. Read more

Sacred Waters

If I were called in / To construct a religion / I should make use of water, wrote the English poet Philip Larkin in 1954—and most religions do.

Waters, religious historian Mircea Eliade explained in the 1950s, are “spring and origin, the reservoir of all the possibilities of existence; they precede every form and support every creation.” So it has been since human history began and, by legend, before. The world, Genesis says, was brought to life by a God who created a “firmament in the midst of the waters.”

Babylonians believed in a world made from a commingling of fresh and salt water. Pima Indians have said Mother Earth was impregnated by a drop of water. The cataclysmic flood that destroys a civilization is also an aqueous archetype and part of Hebrew, Greek, and Aztec cultures. Read more

Water Towers

“One morning as I lifted off from my local airport into perfectly clear skies, I could see these water towers (long a favorite subject) protruding from a rapidly receding cloud bank ten miles east,” writes John English, who took this photo and shared it on our Your Shot community. Read more

Why Water Matters

Though it may seem like a no brainer, it turns out water matters a lot.

Why does water matter?

It seems like a silly thing to ask, because of course it matters. We’re made of it, we’re surrounded by it, we consume it and grow with it. Water is a necessity of life. Obviously.

So why is it that 663 million people don’t have access to clean water?

Why is it that 946 million don’t have access to proper sanitation?

Why does access to clean water matter? Because without it, billions of hours are wasted walking to streams and tributaries. Without clean water, economies are stunted and families are crippled. Millions of young girls and women are forced out of school. Countless stomachs are unfed.  Read more