bottles or tap?

It is remarkable how much people are ready to pay for bottled water in comparison to tap water. While 1 liter of bottled water costs €0.30 or more, 1000 liters of tap water cost less than €0.02. This means that the bottled water is not 100 times more expensive, not even 1000 times more expensive, it is at least 15,000 times more expensive than tap water. Which industry generates higher return on investment than bottled water industry?

In addition, there are environmental issues with bottled water. It is distributed in bottles, which need to be first produced and later recycled or destroyed. Fossil fuels are burned when distributing the bottled water. On the other hand, tap water is distributed using the same pipelines all the time while some energy is used to pump the water in the right direction.

There are various reasons why people prefer bottled water to tap water. Here are probably the most frequent ones:

1. Bottled water tastes better. This is a personal choice.
2. Carbonated bottled water is preferred to still water. This is a personal choice again.
3. Bottled water is not contaminated. Since we are supposed to drink at least 1 liter of water every day, water contamination is an important concern. Water can be contaminated already at the source (e.g. industrial pollution) and/or can be contaminated in the distribution network (e.g. rusty pipes). An alternative to regular buying of bottled water is a one-time purchase of a water purifier and occasional purchases of additional filters. Note that some bottled waters come from the same sources as tap water. The bottled water may or may not be purified. In order to better understand what bottled water you buy read Bottled Water- know What You Are Buying
4. Bottled water contains more minerals. Bottled water labeled as mineral water contains more minerals. Other types of bottled water contain probably about the same amount of minerals as tap water (if not less). The minerals in bottled mineral water are not enough to cover the daily recommended intake. Furthermore, the minerals from “clay and rock” (inorganic) cannot be easily absorbed. So even when consumed, most of those minerals pass quickly through the digestion system. Minerals in plants are absorbed much better than inorganic ones. Other good source of easily absorbable minerals are colloidal minerals. From many different forms, the best choice are organic colloidal bio-electrical trace minerals in a highly absorbable liquid state. Read Not All Minerals Are Created Equal for more details.

Perhaps there is a reason why Evian spells backwards as naive.

Hotel thief no more!

Idea

Safes in hotel rooms are meant to store the valuables of guests. However, how to protect the valuables if the hotel safe is broken or it is too small for some of the items, such as a laptop?

A suitcase with a (combination) lock can be used as a safe. It can certainly store larger valuables as well. You can also be pretty certain that no one from the hotel personnel knows the sequence to open the lock while the hotel safe is probably accessible by someone from the personnel in case of emergency (lost key or forgotten sequence).

If you decide to use suitcase with a combination lock as a safe and want to be absolutely sure that the sequence remains unknown to anyone else, make sure it is always locked when you leave the room.