Must read about water bottles

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aieechihuahua

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The Mother Jones Magazine came this weekend. There are two articles that speak about water bottles, The first talks about Fuji - the second is a side note on other brands. Now, I am a bit depressed. Not that I want to depress ya'll too, but they are both very interesting reading. I feel I must now find a solution for our inn.
Spin the Bottle
H2Uh-Oh
 
My problem with bottled water is that there really are no controls. I had been laughingly saying for years - "For all we know they could just be bottling tap water." Then what happwns = Pepsi admits AquaFina is tap water. And when they say Spring Water - what spring and where?
I will contimue to drink my water from our water treatment plant where the testing is done regularly and if there is a water line break it is announced immediately that we are under a "boil order" as a precaution. My city is in the process of setting up a communications system where ALL water customers receive either an e-mail or a phone call notification when a boil order goes on and again when it is lifted.
 
We do not offer bottled water at our Inn. If they want to bring it with them that is up to them. We do offer ice water when they want it and they have the use of the guest house kitchen anytime they want. Iam with you Kathleen, who the hell knows what kind of water is in that bottle? My hubbie gets in an uproar about how much people are willing to pay for a bottle (usually 8 oz) of water and cry and complain about gas prices.
 
I am not a proponent of bottled water but I have been drinking it this week. I have been having health problems lately and I am trying to eliminate any source of the problem, including the water system. I've gone through almost a gallon of bottled water since Friday. When it's all gone I'll switch back to tap and see what happens.
 
The 2 articles are about where the water is coming from and how much people will pay for bottled water, among other things.
We really have to give guests water when they arrive. If we don't they will dehydrate and have a really bad time. We are in the desert.
 
We do not offer bottled water at our Inn. If they want to bring it with them that is up to them. We do offer ice water when they want it and they have the use of the guest house kitchen anytime they want. Iam with you Kathleen, who the hell knows what kind of water is in that bottle? My hubbie gets in an uproar about how much people are willing to pay for a bottle (usually 8 oz) of water and cry and complain about gas prices..
The only good thing about bottled water is that it goes in the lunch bags and one kind suits all - no way soda will fit all. I only buy it when it is on sale and it is for the lunches - or times when the VFD decised to play with the hydrant and I have guests - a couple bottles are good for that.
I do like the price of my city water also - about $8 per 1000 gallons.
 
The 2 articles are about where the water is coming from and how much people will pay for bottled water, among other things.
We really have to give guests water when they arrive. If we don't they will dehydrate and have a really bad time. We are in the desert..
aieechihuahua said:
The 2 articles are about where the water is coming from and how much people will pay for bottled water, among other things.
We really have to give guests water when they arrive. If we don't they will dehydrate and have a really bad time. We are in the desert.
In your situation I totally agree. Guests coming to you from verdant places like the Northeast or Northwest don't get the whole "hydrate or die" scenario. My bottled water is town water, the same water you get in any small town around here. Except my small town which has a town well for residents.
 
Someone on the PAII forum mentioned getting the metal bottles with logos that can be sterilized between guests. Someone else is getting those and giving them away with the rooms (Tim at Forty Putney, I believe). You might check on their sources to see if that can make any kind of financial sense for you.
We switched from individual bottles to the big dispensers with glass carafes in the rooms. I have bottles to give out on request but lots of people bring their own refillables and use the dispenser to fill them. Our tap water is fine and we use it for everything else, but the bottle dispenser is convenient for refilling bottles that won't fit in the guest room sinks.
 
The 2 articles are about where the water is coming from and how much people will pay for bottled water, among other things.
We really have to give guests water when they arrive. If we don't they will dehydrate and have a really bad time. We are in the desert..
We were in St George, Utah for an Outdoor Writers Conference in 2001 and they preached drink water! If you wait until you are thirsty, you waited too long. There were barrels of bottled water everywhere. Where you are, I would indeed be greeting them with bottles of water. Or pitchers of water.
 
The same people that said bottled water was the way to go also forced us into plastic bags at the grocery store. I will resist the soapbox at this time.
If someone is thirsty and IN YOUR HOME do not hand them a bottle of water...don't serve their breakfast on paper plates either. Not sure why innkeepers think it is the way to be having a bottle of water on a dresser. Repeat after me...we are not hotels...we are not hotels.
 
The same people that said bottled water was the way to go also forced us into plastic bags at the grocery store. I will resist the soapbox at this time.
If someone is thirsty and IN YOUR HOME do not hand them a bottle of water...don't serve their breakfast on paper plates either. Not sure why innkeepers think it is the way to be having a bottle of water on a dresser. Repeat after me...we are not hotels...we are not hotels..
Uh-Oh, Joe...you're on the box!
They come though our home to the next house where their room is. They get a bottle on the way, and are encouraged to come get a pitcher of water and ice from us, but to fill up their bottle with filtered water from the fridge when they go out. I need a better solution. I can't encourage them to drink water often without giving them something to carry it in. I've got some searching to do.
BTW hotels actual charge dearly for that bottle in the room, but you usually don't figure it out until you opened it. Theives!
 
The same people that said bottled water was the way to go also forced us into plastic bags at the grocery store. I will resist the soapbox at this time.
If someone is thirsty and IN YOUR HOME do not hand them a bottle of water...don't serve their breakfast on paper plates either. Not sure why innkeepers think it is the way to be having a bottle of water on a dresser. Repeat after me...we are not hotels...we are not hotels..
Uh-Oh, Joe...you're on the box!
They come though our home to the next house where their room is. They get a bottle on the way, and are encouraged to come get a pitcher of water and ice from us, but to fill up their bottle with filtered water from the fridge when they go out. I need a better solution. I can't encourage them to drink water often without giving them something to carry it in. I've got some searching to do.
BTW hotels actual charge dearly for that bottle in the room, but you usually don't figure it out until you opened it. Theives!
.
So all of these guests arrive from traveling without a water bottle? This has been my pet peeve all along, go to their vehicles and they will have a case of them, and a half dozen empties.
On my other soapboxy part of this issue - when we had a girl here once who was going across the street to the park and her mother called her cell phone to chastise her since she went over there without her water bottle. She came back and got it.
A kid going to the park? What, was she running the Boston Marathon or something? I call it the water-bottle-cult. If you don't have it you will DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I grew up in a desert, guess what we did? When we were thirsty we got a drink. And amazingly enough you can actually get water everywhere now, buy it from vending machines, gas stations...remember when we were kids they didn't have water bottles - they had - hang on...dirty word here "drinking fountains"
tounge_smile.gif

So all that to say, adults are adults let them work out their own drinking issues. "You can lead a horse to..."
 
The same people that said bottled water was the way to go also forced us into plastic bags at the grocery store. I will resist the soapbox at this time.
If someone is thirsty and IN YOUR HOME do not hand them a bottle of water...don't serve their breakfast on paper plates either. Not sure why innkeepers think it is the way to be having a bottle of water on a dresser. Repeat after me...we are not hotels...we are not hotels..
Uh-Oh, Joe...you're on the box!
They come though our home to the next house where their room is. They get a bottle on the way, and are encouraged to come get a pitcher of water and ice from us, but to fill up their bottle with filtered water from the fridge when they go out. I need a better solution. I can't encourage them to drink water often without giving them something to carry it in. I've got some searching to do.
BTW hotels actual charge dearly for that bottle in the room, but you usually don't figure it out until you opened it. Theives!
.
So all of these guests arrive from traveling without a water bottle? This has been my pet peeve all along, go to their vehicles and they will have a case of them, and a half dozen empties.
On my other soapboxy part of this issue - when we had a girl here once who was going across the street to the park and her mother called her cell phone to chastise her since she went over there without her water bottle. She came back and got it.
A kid going to the park? What, was she running the Boston Marathon or something? I call it the water-bottle-cult. If you don't have it you will DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I grew up in a desert, guess what we did? When we were thirsty we got a drink. And amazingly enough you can actually get water everywhere now, buy it from vending machines, gas stations...remember when we were kids they didn't have water bottles - they had - hang on...dirty word here "drinking fountains"
tounge_smile.gif

So all that to say, adults are adults let them work out their own drinking issues. "You can lead a horse to..."
.
We didn't go to NM with water bottles. There are no vending machines in the national parks. Water fountains in the buildings, but no vending machines and nothing out in the park itself. We were very thankful for the car rental folks who handed us bottled water when we got the car. We refilled them every chance we got but we weren't prepared. We don't travel around home with water in the car, we never gave it another thought.
It is overdone here, but it was a necessity there. And it's a necessity because our bodies are not conditioned to the weather. I bet if you live there you don't walk around with bottled water, but I'm glad we had it.
 
We stopped buying bottled water more than a year ago. A total waste of money in my opinion. Our water straight from the tap is just fine for us.
 
When we first started here, we put a caraffe of our wonderful spring water in the guest refrigerators. Our water is piped in from a spring and is the freshest you'll ever have. Most people didn't use it, and more and more I was asked if we had water bottles so they could take it with them on their hikes.
Years later, we broke down and started buying water bottles, but I hated the waste and the impact they've had to the environment. I've looked into having our logo on metal water bottles to provide/sell to our guests, but the extra energy and water it will take to throw all those metal bottles in the diswasher in an extra load kind of defeats the purpose.
Fortunately, our state has now implemented a bottle return deposit on all water bottles, so I still buy them but can justify it more by knowing that they will get recycled. I tell our guests that after they drink the water from the bottles, to refill them from the tap because that water is much better than what they just drank.
 
We supply bottled water in the guest fridges. People drink it and do appreciate it. Even the folks that stay in our suite with a full sized fridge with FILTERED, chilled water right in the fridge door and plenty of drinkware in the cabinets. Our local water works wins all kinds of awards. Joe B. is right - people are totally brainwashed! I always have chilled water to offer for breakfast and people will come to the breakfast table with a bottle of water from the guest fridge. "No thanks, I have this bottled water right here." Re-fill those "disposable" water bottles? hahahahahahahaha!
It is warm here 9 months of the year, so this is an amenity that we provide. The best that I can do is buy bottled water that comes in the most eco-friendly bottle and they all get recycled if they end up on the trash here. I'm sure that if I had carafes in the rooms that I would have lots of water to water the plants around here.
Now, there is one place that I personally will not drink the tap water and that's Lubbock, Texas. They are notorious for awful water there. They even warn you if you ask for a glass of water in a restaurant. :)
 
Yes we know why lemon was put into water.
I will never forget asking for a glass of water in London and the waiter nearly spit as he said aghast "TAP water!!!?"
Funny story - I had a guest a couple weeks ago who got up from the table and went to the big water bottle to get water. I happened to be walking past and said "Oh do you need a refill of your water?" I had the ICED WATER in a ruby red tall glass right above her knife and spoon. She said "Oh is that water? I was not sure so didn't want to try it." She wins the "Here's your sign" award. :)
 
Yes we know why lemon was put into water.
I will never forget asking for a glass of water in London and the waiter nearly spit as he said aghast "TAP water!!!?"
Funny story - I had a guest a couple weeks ago who got up from the table and went to the big water bottle to get water. I happened to be walking past and said "Oh do you need a refill of your water?" I had the ICED WATER in a ruby red tall glass right above her knife and spoon. She said "Oh is that water? I was not sure so didn't want to try it." She wins the "Here's your sign" award. :).
Interesting...so she thought that you might be serving straight gin or vodka for breakfast? No, I don't think so. I think she assumed that the water in the glass was from your tap vs. your water from the water "service" in the big jug there. I've also had folks decline water at breakfast and say that they will go get a bottle of water after breakfast. Yep, it's a cult of the most nefarious kind :)
 
Hmmm...?
So we shouldn't put bulk shampoo, body wash, etc.. in our bathrooms because of some guest's irrational fears of germs, squeamishness about using stuff "other" guests might have touched and that's "good" innkeeping.
And those things don't go in people's bodies like drinking water, they go "on" people's bodies.
But then on the other hand, we should get reusable water bottles and expect the same paranoid, germophobic guests to trust that those are fully sanitized and will use them. Somehow I'm doubting it'll fly in a big way.
Don't get me wrong if I could convince all of our very mainstream, pasty white middle class guests who won't use our earth friendly body care products, recycle anything they use or leave here, waste a ton of water every day, run the A/C every minute they are in the room even with the door open, blah...blah.....blah..... that they won't betray their anti-green attitudes by using a reusable water bottle that has been "sanitized for your protection", then I would.
In a heartbeat. I could even show someone the "sanitize" button on our spiffy new dishwasher and they'd probably still doubt it would fully protect them.
I can guarantee that the not only is our standard well water better than any bottled water out there, our reverse osmosis filtered water is more pure than 99% of the planet's fresh water. We have the quarterly lab results to prove it.
But getting very average, mainstream people to change habits and act more eco-friendly is a tough road to hoe around here. Even for a place billed as an eco-friendly B&B.
 
Yes we know why lemon was put into water.
I will never forget asking for a glass of water in London and the waiter nearly spit as he said aghast "TAP water!!!?"
Funny story - I had a guest a couple weeks ago who got up from the table and went to the big water bottle to get water. I happened to be walking past and said "Oh do you need a refill of your water?" I had the ICED WATER in a ruby red tall glass right above her knife and spoon. She said "Oh is that water? I was not sure so didn't want to try it." She wins the "Here's your sign" award. :).
Frankly, there is water that a slice of lemon can't help and might actually make worse. It's not about the cleanliness of the water there. The water there is disgusting - metallic, something bad. When our son was in college there, he used one of those filter systems on a pitcher of water that seemed to work fairly well just in his dorm room or apartment. For sports things, he would buy large sports bottles of water. He has a platypus water thing for hiking and such and I think he was challenged to get that filled before he'd leave town to go camping. He would drink the tap water in a pinch because he got used to it but it is bad tasting, bad. I have never had anything like that in my life that came out of a tap!
 
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