How difficult it is for children (and grown-ups!) of this generation to look up at a sky full of stars and share this sense of awe, unless a deliberate attempt is made to go to a place far away from city lights. Cities like Singapore, where I live, have a very high degree of light pollution. I keep wondering, is all this lighting really necessary?  In an era where we need to be conserving every bit of energy, we are literally burning away billions of gallons of oil in night lighting. Reducing the quantum of lighting will help decrease carbon emissions as well as costs for businesses.

Here are the things I observe:
- Buildings, especially commercial buildings have so many lights on in different floors, past midnight and till dawn breaks. If this is a security requirement, these can be dimmed to the lowest wattage absolutely necessary.

- Overly bright advertisements in neon lights, large sceen HDTVs on the exterior of shopping malls need to be mellowed down on the glare they produce.

- Have you been to a shop only to find your eyes crinkle as you enter, because of the sheer intensity of light? I strongly feel that lighting can be done in a more energy efficient and aesthetic manner, so as to reduce energy consumption, and the city glare.

- The decorations in various city streets are lit up extremely brightly during festivals. These are pretty no doubt, but is it really necessary to waste so much energy. Even the trees are not spared, we forget how the heat and light affects the insects and birds nesting there.

- Many cities the world over encourage an active night life. I’m not against night life per se, and I find this actually makes cities a vibrant and fun place to live in. Cities have to find the right balance of closing times for shops, clubs and restaurants, and the health of its inhabitants. Encouraging people to get the right amount of sleep is healthier for the body, mind and the planet. It will be healthy for business too, as people will be more productive during the daytime.

What can we do to reduce light pollution:

- Write to the media, businesses and the authorities and tell them how you feel. It’s not always that they respond favourably, but they may begin to see your point, especially if it helps reduce costs.

- In your own home, review your outdoor lighting and use the lowest wattage possible. Keep it switched off when you feel it’s not necessary.

- Use focus lights during the night, and softer lights with a lower wattage for the rest of the room

- Go to bed early…easier said than done, especially in a fast-pace life such as ours. But do yourself, your health and the planet a favour and trying to tuck in early at least 2- 3 days in a week to begin with.
- Here are some links where you can learn more about the topic.

http://www.darksky.org/mc/page.do

The November 2008 edition of the National Geographic has an article on Light Pollution http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/light-pollution/klinkenborg-text

Let us restore some of the beautiful darkness that night deserves. Let us allow the stars to shine through.

A special thanks to my friends, Sudha and Sridhar for sharing their concerns on light pollution.

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Bottled water, no doubt, is convenient. At times, it even makes a lifestyle statement. And it is becoming increasingly common to think that it’s the only alternative, as one may have lost faith in local public utilities to deliver uncontaminated water, regardless of whether one lives in the developed or developing world.

Here are some ways to help break the habit

- Learn more. Read the books recommended at the bottom of this blog as well as this excellent report by Food and Water Watch.  This insightful report is a must read. It’s entitled “Take back the tap:Why choosing tap water over bottled water is better for your health, your pocketbook and the environment”

- Invest in a good filter. If you live in the developed world, chances are that your bottled water is no safer than your tap water, as scientific studies have shown time and again. This doesn’t mean that tap water is necessarily safe by itself.  Regardless of where you live, the presence of chlorine and chlorine by-products, pesticides, synthetic fertilisers and chemicals, dirt and bacterial contamination in pipes and overhead tanks are genuine concerns. It makes sense to research into a good quality water filter, such as one with activated carbon, with natural magnetic stones to energise the water.

Here’s a guide that may help you choose one:
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/take-action/consumer-tools/choosing-a-water-filter/

Another website which has loads of information on the contaminants in bottled as well as tap water is www.thefreewaterreport.org

- Carry your own bottle of water, preferably a stainless steel one with filtered water from home.

- If you’re dying of thirst and can’t get hold of any potable water, look for alternatives such as fresh juice or fruit or pick up bottled water that has been manufactured as close as possible to where you live. Please recycle your used bottles. My friend, Vinisha suggested a great website for recycling ideas. It’s http://www.instructables.com/contest/keepthebottle/

-Refuse free bottled water that is dispensed liberally at events, parties and functions and avoid providing them when you are organising an event. Hire or install a water dispenser instead.

- Encourage your company not to distribute bottled waters at seminars and conferences and place water dispensers instead

Your saying NO to bottled water can make a huge difference in reducing a host of environmental ills, conserving oil and reducing carbon emissions. More importantly, you will help in conserving water that belongs to communities, and in ensuring water quality that belongs to future generations.

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Plastic galore

In an era where we need to particularly conscious of our use of oil and water, and work hard towards reducing global warming, the innocuous looking plastic water bottle has become an ubiquitous symbol of the kind of things we as a human race should precisely not be doing.

We are slurping up bottled water at an astonishing pace. The volume of global consumption at 41 billion gallons in 2004 represents a doubling of volumes in 5 years. The US consumes a lion’s share of the market, but countries such as India and China are catching up. Much of this is due to an enormous marketing myth and our own notion that bottled water, is somehow is purer and healthier, and that tap water is simply not safe or clean enough.

Is your bottled water safer than tap water?

Many scientific tests show that bottle water is no better than tap water. If you feel that bottle water tastes better, it’s possibly because there’s some chemicals added to make it taste better, or you’re just buying into the marketing hype.

Tap water goes through several rounds of stringent checks, especially in more developed parts of the world. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US, for example, subjects tap water to hundreds of tests every month, whereas only one test a week is done on bottled water. And only 40% of bottled water in the US is regulated by the FDA anyway.

In fact, the Environmental Law Foundation in the US sued eight bottled water manufacturers for using words such as “pure” to market water that contained bacteria, arsenic and chlorine. Environmental regulations may be far less stringent in developing countries for bottled water.

Watch this ABC News video on Bottled vs Tap Water, which compares bottled and tap water.

What is the true cost of bottled water?

According to Food and Water Watch, the average cost of one gallon of tap water is only $0.002 per gallon, whereas the price of commercial bottled water ranges from $0.89 to $8.26 per gallon, that’s about 400 to 4000 times more than tap water! 90% of bottle’s price goes for bottling, packaging, shipping, marketing, retailing and profit, anyway.

A possible health hazard comes from the extensive use of phthalates (plastic softening chemicals) and other synthetic chemicals such as Bisphenol A in the bottle production which may leach into the water stored in the bottles.

It’s not just consumers who are paying a huge premium, so does the environment.

According to the Container Recycling Institute:

- Globally, bottled water accounts for 1.5 millions tons of plastic waste as only 20% of plastic bottles get recycled. The bottles end up in incinerators, landfills and many in oceans posing a threat to marine life.
- Making the plastic bottles consumes 47 million gallons of oil every year, enough to enough to take 100,000 cars off the road and emitting more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
- Massive quantities of fossil fuels involved in shipping more than 5 trillion gallons of bottled water which are shipped every year.
By purchasing bottled water, you’re indirectly raising the price of gasoline and contributing to global climate change.

- It takes two gallons of water to actually produce one gallon of bottled water. That’s the kind of wastage we cannot afford when water is becoming increasingly scarce.

The price of bottled water does not include a host of social, and environmental costs that society has to bear:

- Toxic emissions and air pollution from production of plastic damage public health.

- Landfilled plastic bottles risk contaminating ground water as they take a 1000 years to biodegrade, and the synthetic chemical additives and phthtalates leach into the groundwater, threatening water quality for future generations.

-Many communities suffer from a loss of groundwater as a result of massive extraction of local water, for which companies pay a pittance, and reap huge profits, without sharing the profits with the community.

Read this report on the lack of effective laws to curb water exploitation in India.
http://www.indiaresource.org/campaigns/coke/2003/nowaterdrinkcoke.html

Governments should be investing billions to improve the quality and image of tap water, to manage and supply at a fair cost of what is essentially a common good belonging to the community. In privatising this precious resource, it is important to think who is profiting from a public good, and who is actually bearing the real costs.

I’ll explore in the next part, how we can break our addiction to bottled water, a habit that damages our health, pollutes the air, exacerbates global warming, contaminates the soil, and threatens future water supplies.

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