Letter to CBC on tap versus bottled water debate

Dear Newscasters 

In response to your news reviews about municipalities and school boards restricting or banning bottled water in schools and municipal buildings I find the debate is ridiculous. Much of what the bottled water companies have said about tap water is accurate, as I will outline below. However, the bottled water industry is not much better. 99% of the cost of bottled water is for advertising, plastic bottles, transportation and profits etc. and the quality of their water is often no better than tap water and sometimes worse. It’s certainly not worth the high cost. There is a much safer and much cheaper solution to the problem. 

I have been studying water quality for almost two decades and for the last fifteen years have been selling, what I believe to be the best water purifiers in the world, but they cost between $400 and $1000. They are expensive and a lot of ordinary people can’t make that investment in their health. I have been trying to solve that problem for years and have only recently come up with a new business model that can provide each home in the City of Ottawa with unlimited clean, pure, safe great-tasting water for less than 32 cents a day. That means sufficient pure water with all its essential minerals intact for drinking, cooking and even for the pets and indoor plants. Especially the fish! 

Please do not think that I blame the city water purification people for the poor quality water problem. They are doing the best they can but given the volume they have to produce and the chemicals and contaminants being leaked into our waterways they just can’t refine the water to a level that is drinkable. Even if they could, that water would be re-contaminated as it passed through the hundreds of miles of pipes to reach our homes. I want that deadly chlorine in my water right up until it reaches my taps . But then I have to make a decision, do I want to have a good water purifier or do I want to be the purifier? If I decide to be the purifier, I must remember replacing the clogged human organs can be a long, painful and sometimes fatal process and the replacement you get is never a new one. It’s your decision, do you really want you and your family to be the filters? Or do you want to be able to throw away the bacteria, chemicals, heavy metals, poisons and other contaminants every year and start with a brand new fresh purifier cartridge? 

For more information about how citizens of Ottawa can get great tasting water for less than 39 cents a day they can go to my website. The website include a large number of reports on why tap water is not good for your long term health. It also explains why the Doulton water purification cartridge towers above all other water purification systems when it comes to producing great-tasting water with all the natural minerals still intact.  

There is a much better alternative to both tap water and bottled water that will keep people healthy, kids will drink it because it tastes so much better than tap water and it won’t involve filling the landfills with plastic bottles.   The perfect environmentally friendly solution to the tap and bottled water debate. 

Did you know that Doulton started making ceramic water filters 180 years ago for Queen Victoria and they have been improving on it ever since. Now it filters down to 0.3 of a micron, which is pretty small when the diameter of an average hair measures 100 microns across. 

Go to www.belkraft.com for more background information such as: 

  • Why it is so important for us to drink water for our long term health?
  • The benefits of drinking plenty of water.
  • How bad is our tap water?
  • A comparison of all sources of purified water
  • Why a Doulton washable ceramic /carbon block cartridge is better than any other system.
  • How you can get clean, pure, safe, great tasting water for less than 39 cents a day?

I hope you can investigate this much better alternative to tap or bottled water. I already have doctors and health food stores promoting it for me. Unfortunately at 32 cents a day the advertising budget is virtually non-existent. I just want people in Ottawa to have a better choice.

Thanks,

Ron Geyer

To whom it may concern.

Here is my opinion of the Bottled Water debate that seems to be raving across the city.
My personal info is at the bottom of the letter

WHY THE BOTTLED WATER VERSUS TAP WATER DEBATE IS SILLY AND MISLEADING.

Many local municipal agencies are making moves to ban bottled water sales in their establishments, stating that bottled water is no better than tap water and people are paying too much money for a product that creates an environmental nightmare.

The water bottlers are saying that if kids don’t have bottled water available to them they will turn back to the sugar laden soda drinks because the taste of city water is bad. And so the silly argument can continue forever until someone wakes up and realizes that both sides are wrong and nobody is looking at a simple solution that can resolve the problem for everybody. Let’s look at the facts.

BOTTLED WATER FACTS

These are taken from a US study simply because a Canadian version is not available but the truth is proportionately the figures apply just as much in Canada.

  • Each day over 70 million bottles of water are sold in the US.
  • Last year over 38 billion single-use water bottles ended up in U.S. landfills and waterways leaching toxins into our earth and water.
  • Bottled Water production, transportation and disposal required more than 17 million barrels of oil last year in America alone, enough fuel for more than 1 million cars for a year, generating more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.
  • 1.5 million barrels of oil are used to produce the plastic bottles for the 8 billion gallons of bottled water consumed each year in the U.S. This equates to enough oil to power 100,000 vehicles for a year.
  • Transporting water bottles from origin to market in the U.S. alone is equivalent to 38,000, eighteen-wheel trucks delivering water weekly.
  • Over 2.5 billion tons of plastic are used each year to produce single-use water bottles, resulting in over 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year, requiring 47 million gallons of oil to produce.
  • Bottled water companies, water to production ratios are roughly 3 to 1. This means for every 3 liters of freshwater that the bottled water industry takes from the earth and our U.S. municipal water sources only 1 liter of bottled water is actually produced. What happens to the remaining 2 liters? It is used to clean bottles and machinery and discarded as wastewater.

TAP WATER FACTS

  • In the so called filtering of city water large amounts of toxic chemicals are added to the already heavily contaminated water sources including;
  • The chlorine that is added to the water to disinfect it of viruses, bacteria and parasites is not only poisonous but acts upon microscopic organic material to create Trihalomethanes (THM’s) which are known to be carcinogenic.
  • Scientists at all levels of government and research institutes around the world have declared that the long term, continued use of chlorinated water leads to cancer, heart disease, birth defects and a host of other major health problems.
  • Over the past two decades, our society has dumped more chemical waste, sewage, poisons, industrial waste and drugs into our water sources than at anytime in history.
  • In the first two months of the year there have been 3 contaminating spills into the Ottawa River. One nuclear, one raw sewage water and recently a spill of 6,000 lbs of Freon used in air conditioning and refrigeration units. You can’t send your old fridge to the dump until you have paid to have the toxic Freon removed by a registered contractor. It’s the law because its dangerous, but the city declares it will have no effect on the purity of our city tap water.
  • If you need 100’s more reasons why not to drink tap water visit www.belkraft.com

Please don’t get me wrong I am not against what the municipal water people are doing. Given the volume of tap water they have to filter and that the provincial standards for water quality permit relatively small amounts of cyanide, strontium and hundreds of other toxic chemicals we can’t expect more. Recent research has stated that they are less concerned about the 2300 chemicals found in our water and more about the powerful cocktails that are created when many of these chemicals get together in the mix.

Even if they could clean the water to a safe level it would get re-contaminated as it travels through the hundreds of miles of pipes to get to my home. I will categorically state that I WANT the deadly chlorine in my tap water right up to the taps in my home, because at that point I can make the decision about what I will drink or not.

The Third Alternative

Where in the debate has anybody considered the third alternative? One that provides pure, clean, fresh great-tasting water without the need for a single plastic bottle going to recycling or the landfill. There are hundreds of water purification systems on the market and unfortunately many of them do a poor job of purifying the water. If you open the Brita refill carton (it’s written on the inside of the box) it clearly states in tiny print,  “the Brita Pitcher filter is not intended to purify water.” If you would like to find out a few of the many facts and reports on Bottled water, tap water and water filters go to www.belkraft.com

Now you and your family can have unlimited pure, clean, safe, great tasting water for drinking, cooking and even pets and house plants (the fish love it) all for less than 32 cents a day. Yep you heard me right, you don’t have to buy a water purifier, don’t take care of it, you just drink the water or put some in a safe drinking bottle and take it with you and your whole family can drink great water for less than the cost of one small bottle of bottled water from the vending machine each day.

If you are currently drinking bottled or tap water you should find out more.