California's Chez Panisse Among Upscale Restaurants Leading Bottled Water Backlash

:applause:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2990824


Upscale Restaurants Shun Bottled Water

By MICHELLE LOCKE

BERKELEY, Calif. Mar 29, 2007 (AP)— Bye-bye bottled water. Hello eau de tap. A new trend is in the pipeline, with some upscale restaurants ditching packaged H2O in the name of conservation.

The bottled water backlash, which recently spread to the venerable Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, is spurred by environmental concerns over the energy used in transportation as well as the disposal of all those containers.

"We just decided this was something we had to do," said Mike Kossa-Rienzi, general manager of Chez Panisse, where owner Alice Waters has pioneered the eat local, eat fresh concept. "It just makes sense to us to not have to use all the energy and resources to bottle water in Italy and then truck it to our restaurant and then after that deal with the recycling of it."

Chez Panisse stopped serving bottled non-sparkling water last year and expects to stop serving bottled carbonated water in a few weeks, just as soon as the restaurant's new carbonator is installed, said Kossa-Rienzi, who visited a San Francisco restaurant, Incanto, to see how it made the switch some years ago.

Across the San Francisco Bay at Poggio in Sausalito, Larry Mindel has been serving filtered tap water he has a machine that filters and carbonates since the restaurant opened in 2003.

I don't eat at restaurants, but if I frequented one that used bottled water I'd sure mention this idea to the mgmt.

besides the massive collection of plastic bottles, it's dead water and not very good. The Ourblue family is all about the faucet and the glass now.

mainly because I don't like to taste the chlorine...

I use SIGG bottles when I want to transport--- lightweight aluminum with an inner porceline type lining that prevents "metal taste." Highly recommend...

or a little vitimin C powder.

Bill

not only was it never needed, but it required a HUGE campaign just to make people think they needed bottled water at all.

They seem to think one must NEVER EVER drink tap water. The disinformation campaign has been a complete success, I'd say.

Completely brainwashed, IMHO.

I drink my Brita-filtered water, sometimes with a slice of lemon from my own tree. I REFUSE to waste precious natural resources by buying bottled water.

I remember when EVERY business had drinking fountains..(before the big glug-glug jugs & cups).

A while back, there were all these "investigations" that showed how many GERMS there were lurking in them, so bottled water seemed to them to be the solution.:eyes:

We're all so damned germ-phobic..

I think the AIDS panic of the 80-90's had a lot to do with it too..nervous-nellies feared "who" might be drinking from those fountains & touching them :eyes:

How on earth did people manage to stay alive before everything was hermetically sealed and pre-packaged in "personal sizes"?:rofl:

Plenty of cats and dogs are ALLERGIC to plastic, which most bottled water is bottled in. The water can absorb some of the plastic, and, while not totally dangerous to animals, those that are allergic get many strange reactions, zits on their face, or in the case of one of my cats, losing hair on top of her head, by the way, I didn't know her skin was so damned wrinkly up there, she started looking like Yoda. :)

It wasn't even our fault, at least not totally, it happened last year in the early spring, we have an above ground swimming pool in our backyard, and it was covered, and we caught her climbing onto the cover and drinking the standing water that was on top of it. The vet asked if we used plastic containers when we took her in for losing hair, we said no, and he then said it was an allergic reaction from plastic, and when we found her drinking out of the pool, we put a fence around it and she grew the hair back.

Normal tap water is treated already, and while some animals and humans don't like some of the taste of chemicals or minerals dissolved in it, that can be remedied by installing a filter on the faucet or using a filtered container.

Having seen what goes into- and comes out of the California aqueduct....

Gary DeVore, for example:



http://ca.tv.yahoo.com/gary-de-vore/contributor/37668/bio

Not to mention agricultural wastes.... When I lived there, we used a reverse osmosis filter- which worked well enough, but I won't drink that stuff straight up.

Now, if you want fine unfiltered tap water, come to Portland, Oregon.

http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=98900





Commissioner Randy Leonard said it first – and he said it well: “From forest to tap, Portland’s drinking water is the best in the world.” A recent taste test confirms what Portlanders know: the best tasting water is from the Bull Run Watershed, the primary source of Portland’s drinking water.

KGW TV sponsored the taste test in November 2005. Ten people tasted 10 waters without knowing the source of each sample. Some samples came from other water providers. National beverage companies bottled others. Then there was vintage Bull Run . Seven out of ten taste testers preferred Bull Run water.

The test did not compare cost, but 34 refills of a 16-ounce glass cost less than a penny. That’s a lot less than bottled water—and water from most other local water providers.

The best for fractions of a penny – where else can you get a bargain like that?

http://www.portlandonline.com/water/index.cfm?a=jiife&c=ebcbe

There are perfectly legitimate reasons to buy bottled water. For example, when I'm out and about for the day, I often get thirsty. Stop into any grocery or QuickieMart and all you'll see are row after row of sodas, sugar laden fruit juices, and alcoholic drinks. I don't drink soda, I don't drink sugary things, I don't drink coffee, and I only drink tea when it's green and I've steeped it myself (in double filtered water maintained at exactly 180F for three minutes). So what are we supposed to drink? Tap water is an alternative in restaraunts or at home, but most bottled beverages are consumed while people are on the go.

I don't drink bottled water because the water is cleaner. I drink bottled water because it's convenient and it's healthier than just about anything else you can buy in a bottle. Unless we're all going to start carrying around coolers, I don't see any superior alternative.

Just a thought.

:P

I can go through a 16 ounce water bottle in about 15 minutes when it hits 105 here in the summer. I guess I could fill up the back of my car with water bottles, but the weight would kill my mileage :)

I could just take a bigger bottle, but the bottle would eventually get hot as well. There's nothing worse than drinking hot water when you're hot and sweaty.

Once upon a time, when cities were built for people on foot and horseback, there were community fountains that people could stop and drink at. When we moved into the car, we developed a bottle culture primarily built on soda. Before bottled water came along, I consumed copious amounts of 7-Up because it was the healthiest thing I could find to drink. Bottled water was definitely an improvement.

There still are water fountains in most public buildings. If it were a choice between encouraging the commodification of a resource that is absolutely necessary for life on earth and having the convenience of a portable tap, which would you choose? Because some would argue that that is already the choice, that the more consumers are willing to pay for water in the US, the more expensive water becomes for all humans the world over.

And, being a subcontractor, I had to find ways to keep myself cool on the cheap, there was no AC and the inside of the truck could get up to 130 degrees or higher on hot summer days. I didn't buy bottled water, or bottled anything, except for, at least once a day, one bottle of Gatorade to replenish my electrolytes. Usually I drank my own drinks from home, I put water in gallon jugs, about 2 of them, and would have an insulated water bottle, the ones with the straw, to refill with the water from the jugs, which I would put in a cooler next to me. This would keep me hydrated for about the 10 hours I worked a day. The water stayed close to ice cold, I'd let the ice in the cooler melt throughout the day, but the water would still remain cold within the gallon jugs till I get back home. I spent, on average, a little more than a dollar a day, and that was just for the Gatorade.

I feel the same way, but I have made a real concerted effort to fill a bottle of filtered water from my house. They even make ice cube trays with "cubes" - they are longer cyclinder shaped - shaped perfectly to be inserted into a water bottle. I found the trays at bed bath & beyond.

Every little bit counts! Just feel good about the times that you can conserve and bring your own, but don't beat yourself up when you can't. As long as you try to reduce and encourage others to do so.

bottled water is a restaurant is actually pretty funny, you get your water and then pour it over tap water ice cubes.

I also keep the filtered water cold in frig in bottle called...

Water U ...made in the USA

the tap is separate..and it filters the water and is located next to regular tap..


fly

because is comes from the Hetch Hetchy dam in beauitufl Yosemite National Park.

so they are not getting Hetch Hetchy water. Berkeley gets its water from EBMUD (Mokulumne River), probably just as good a source as Hetch Hetchy. I don't know the source of Sausalito water. Some restaurants really don't need to filter at all. Some are in places that require significant filtering. It's nice that it will be done on site though.

When I was camping there years ago I made sure to fill up my water jugs to take back to Los Angeles.

Yosemite water has Giardia in it, which will give you the heaving runs. For all the noise SF makes about its pure Yosemite water, the truth is that even they have to filter it to take out the Giardia cysts. If they didn't, half the people in San Francisco would be stuck to their toilets.

Only the highest altitude alpine Yosemite lakes, from well above the treeline, are safe to drink directly from. Everything else has to be filtered.

Ours comes mostly from the Colorado River.

:puke:

Blow the dam. Free the valley. FSF :mad:

If half the folk who consume "bottled water" knew what the sources for some of it are, they'd feel mighty dumb. Many of the store brands, sold in this country and canada, originate at a rusty old fire hydrant up in concrete, wa...tankers pull up regularly to hose up and haul valuable concrete town tap water downriver to cc beverage corp, where it's bottled and then distributed as cascade pure or cascade clear or flavored crystal "spring" water...the company keeps changing names (probably to keep their secret) and retain their huge profit, while poor, tiny little concrete gets pennies on the gallon for what is available to all at the turn of a spigot.

Shameful, indeed, to be hiking a beautiful scenic trail and be assaulted by the trash these bottlers have infested our nation with. It's about time somebody noticed all those mountains of plastic garbage being produced.