Feeling guilty about your bottled water? Or worried that it is not as pure as the pastoral scene on the label implies? Your worries are justified. Bottled water is unregulated in the US, and often as not, it is just filtered tap water – with a heavier carbon footprint thanks to the requisite plastic container and the shipping.

Luckily, just as you’re re-evaluating this resource-intensive habit, so is everyone else, from the cities that have passed bottled water taxes (hello Chicago) to the bottled water companies themselves, to entrepreneurs trying to figure a better way.

Culligan, the big kahuna of bottled water service companies now makes a cooler that hooks up to your tap – an apparent concession that the days of carting around those big blue bottles are numbered.

But one of the most unique solutions to filling your cup without filling the landfill may be generating your own purified water. You can do that by tapping into the humidity in the air with an Atmospheric Water Generator, which pulls water from “thin air,” as long as that air registers at least 35 percent humidity.

We tested such a water generator, called the Ecoloblue 28 (see photo, right). At first, it was hard to believe that this water was just materializing in our kitchen. It tasted fresh, crisp and cool, outperforming the stuff that came through our refrigerator’s charcoal filter.

We just loved that we were generating our own water, like being off-grid with the electricity. Not being dependent on the tap, we had no worries about fluctuations in the local water supply and the additives you can’t turn down, like the fluoride and chlorine in so many city systems. Nor did we have to worry that our water contained traces of medications, like those found in tap water tested during an AP investigation last year. Tap water, for the record, is still considered basically safe, but it varies, by city, region and within time frames. Same for bottled water; it varies by label but largely comes from tap water, and can be contaminated too as tests by the Environmental Working Group found. Or it might be pure as the snow — in the Alps; so add a jet ride to its carbon footprint.

The Natural Resources Defense Council’s report, Tap Water Quality and Safety, endorses tap water, but with caveats for pregnant women and older people and people with special conditions. Makes you wonder.

But we wanted to know more about the Ecoloblue water, and what it did or did not contain. Is pulling water from air a perfectly pure proposition? Our home water tests showed that the water generated was free of chlorine, nitrates/nitrates, sediment, suggesting that the machine’s multiple filter system was doing its job. At one point, there was a buildup in the intake area, the result of one filter that hadn’t been prepared properly at the factory. That problem has since been fixed. New tech sometimes needs tweaking. (For more on our personal take on using the Ecoloblue machine, see Ecoloblue: Our Home Test.)

HOW IT WORKS

So how do these AWGs produce water? It’s simple de-humidification, followed by complex filtration. The reason the water generated tasted so pure — and professional tests show that it meets or beats water compliance standards  in several countries — is no mystery. After the machine condenses the water from the air, it runs it through a sophisticated system of three carbon filters, one reverse-osmosis filter and three UV lights to kill or trap any germs, dust, pollen or air pollutants that might float in or build up in the storage tanks.

“The object is to make sure everybody can use the water regardless of the environment they’re living in,” says Ecoloblue CEO Henri-James Tieleman. So if you have cat dander floating around, or Uncle Joe is standing nearby with a cigar or you happen to live in a high air pollution area, the Ecoloblue will be impervious. Even in Shanghai, where the machine was deliberately tested outdoors, it produced pure water, according to one of several water tests the company has commissioned in the US, China, Australia and the UK.

“We are complying even with polluted air in Shanghai, what else (other proof) do we need to get?” asks Tieleman.

But are four filters and three UV lights, and all that, really necessary?

“Do you like the water you’re drinking?” asks Tieleman, a native of The Netherlands and apparent master of the non-rhetorical question. “I would say this is why you like it, because it went through all this process” in which the filters, lights and collection uptake are engineered, timed and strategically placed to work together.

Addison, Texas’ planned new water tower is destined to be noticed — and not just because it will be 195-feet tall. The water tower will be among the first in the nation to be powered by wind turbines mounted on top.

Ten eight-foot-tall wind turbines will supply enough power to run the tower as well as street lights on Arapaho Road in this suburb north of Dallas. Adding to its uniqueness, the $5 million project will include a community classroom in the pedestal base, where school children will be able to learn about wind energy and water distribution.

The project also calls for use of native and drought-tolerant landscaping.

“We wanted to do something that looked nice and also was as sustainable as possible,” said public works director Nancy Cline. “The city has always been cognizant of the impact of decisions in the design process and we are always thinking about the future and sustainability. “

The tower also will serve as a piece of civic art. It is being designed by Dallas artist Brad Goldberg, who is known for his ability to fuse sculpture, landscape and urban design.

“He has worked a lot with projects particularly like some of the DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) areas and the Trinity River Corridor with Dallas,” Cline said. “He is able to understand what the circumstances are and what the constraints are and still think outside the box.”

Fort Worth engineering firm Freese and Nichols, a partner on the project, looked at possibly using solar to generate power but ultimately decided wind was the right solution. “It came down to efficiency, and we believed wind would deliver better results,” said Jessica Brown, Freese’s project manager for the tower.

The project will use vertical axis wind turbines from Cleanfield Energy. This kind of wind turbine rotates about the shaft’s vertical axis and is particularly well suited to urban areas because it can capture energy regardless of the wind direction.

In the next few months, the city will install one of the wind turbines on a 40-foot pole. An anemometer will be placed on top and on the city’s existing tower at Addison Circle to measure the wind speed. “We’re hoping that will let you read out what the whole set of units is producing,” Cline said.

The project, planned at Arapaho Road and Surveyor Boulevard, is expected to go to bid later this year, with construction starting in early 2010.

Ascending through the dense greenery on the way up Rio de Janeiro’s Corcovado mountain, travelers may be caught off guard by the sight of a Toucan or the call of a far-off monkey, they may marvel at the beauty of a wild orchid, and they’ll almost certainly be struck by the size of it — the sensation of being far from civilization, not smack in the middle of a metropolitan area housing well over 10 million people.

Few visitors, one suspects, would guess that this forest is man-made — a mammoth greenification project, dating back over a hundred years, that serves as an example (albeit an over-sized one) of how governments might set out to combat the side effects that office buildings and sidewalks have on both the ecosystems surrounding them and the humans living within them.

Corcovado, home of the city’s famous Christ the Redeemer statue, is situated within the Tijuca National Park, said to be the largest urban forest in the world. I spent a couple of days in the park this spring, and barely explored a fraction of the natural attractions that could keep eco-tourists busy enough to forget that the world’s most famous beaches are only minutes away.

At Corcovado, exposure to the forest is accidental for many tourists: Visitors who want to see the mountaintop statue, and take in the spectacular views of the city below (assuming the peak isn’t shrouded in fog, as it was the day I went) must take an open-sided cog railway (see photo below). The train climbs through vegetation ranging from common looking trees to Brazilian rosewood and cinnamon. The heat of the city below is quickly replaced by cool, moist air, and, while the train passes some small hillside neighborhoods, one feels completely transported by the time the train arrives at the tourist center above.

Another of the Park’s most impressive features is one designed solely for nature-lovers. The two hundred year-old Botanical Garden is a place both for study and for pleasure, an enormous refuge whose paths wind organically past family-friendly lawns and romantically secluded benches.

Opposite sides of the moisture spectrum are represented here, with a fascinating cactus garden on one end of the garden balanced by an orchid house at the other. Most impressive is a huge Bromeliad exhibit in which the most famous member of that plant family, the pineapple, is joined by hundreds of stranger and more colorful cousins.

Wrapped around the Garden and Corcovado is a network of green spaces occupying over twelve square miles and offering a range of experiences, from casual afternoon strolls to picnic hikes and serious expeditions through Atlantic rainforest terrain, where observant hikers can see many plant and wildlife species threatened with extinction.

And yet, the area was practically barren in the mid-1800s. The land here had been deforested by years of sugar-cane and coffee farming, resulting in a disruption of the city’s water supply. (Today, 60% of Rio’s water comes from the park.) Emperor D. Pedro II set out to undo the damage caused by overuse, and hired a forester who spent the next dozen years planting 72,000 saplings; as detailed here, the process emphasized native species and was extensive enough that it fostered natural reforestation in surrounding areas.

In its waning days, the outgoing Bush administration is promoting oil-shale development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming by passing regulations that would open public lands to oil-shale exploration, leasing and development. In November, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management put these regulations into effect to develop an oil shale program that the bureau says could add 800 billion barrels of oil from land in the Western United States.

In response, earlier this week, 11 environmental groups notified the administration and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of their intent to file federal lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act. The BLM has 60 days to respond. The environmental groups, which include the Sierra Club, the Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity, among others, want the administration to consider the effects that commercial oil-shale development will have on endangered species.

Oil-shale development destroys habitats, causes air pollution and depletes and pollutes scarce water resources in the West, says Melissa Thrailkill, staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco. In addition, the process of turning oil-shale into a usable fuel source demands massive amounts of electricity.

As many as 10 new power plants will be needed in these three states to generate this electricity, which then increases greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

Polar bears, ribbon seals, Pacific walrus, American pika and ocean corals are all at risk of extinction due to global warming.

And in order to produce energy from oil-shale, large amounts of water are required from the Colorado River, a water supply upon which many residents and farmers depend. The river is also home to four endangered fish species.

In a mid-November statement, Assistant Secretary of Land and Minerals Management Stephen Allred, defended the program, saying, “The United States needs all types of energy resources, both conventional and renewable, in order to meet our future needs. Production from domestic resources makes us more secure and less vulnerable to future energy crises, and increases our security and economic well-being. The tremendous oil shale resources that we have in the U.S., containing several times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia, can be a vital component of that secure future.”

Tracy Boyd, communications and sustainability manager with Shell Exploration and Production, says these regulations were supposed to come out a while ago. “They are not so much eleventh hour maneuvers but just wrapping up business as the administration comes to a close,” he says. It’s possible, he says, that the environmental entities who are challenging the regulations may not realize the realistic timeline for development. “These regulations do not authorize the initiation of any actual commercial leasing. It may be as long as 10 years away. There are many more reviews that need to be conducted. [Oil shale] leasing is way down the road,” he says.

Thrailkill, though, says the new oil-shale regulations will have huge impact on global warming that “is simply unacceptable,” adding that, “dirty energy development will have enormous and damaging effects on the waters, wildlife and lands of the West.”

The new Bush administration laws will be procedurally hard to rescind. “This is a big hassle for the incoming Obama Administration,” she says. “Congress could step in,” she says, but with much of the population clamoring for oil, especially “homegrown and not foreign oil, there’s a lot of pressure to develop this land.”

“There needs to be incentives for companies to develop clean energy and at the same time reduce demand,” she says.

Unfortunately, Thrailkill says, the Bush Administration and the Bureau of Land Management did not consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service to come up with an environmentally smart program. “Commercial oil-shale development could help lead us to catastrophic climate change, [rendering] thousands of plants and animals around the world extinct. “

“The Obama team is going to have to make [clean energy] one of its top priorities,” she says.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Our refrigerators, which can be the biggest electricity hogs of all household appliances, have been getting the once-over from the Energy Star program for several years now, with those bright yellow tags alerting us to what sort of electrical consumption we can expect. Washers and dryers, ditto.

Now our dishwashers, which have been insidiously luxuriating in hot water all this time, are getting the full review by government energy gurus.

The reason: Snap! They use water.

Energy Star, the U.S. government authority on these matters, has previously rated dishwashers based on the electricity they consume. Starting in August 2009, they’ll be subjecting dishwashers to the first set of criteria that will take water consumption into account. The second phase is set to go into effect in summer 2011.

By the time the overhaul is complete in 2012, the new guidelines are expected to save Americans 671 billion Btu’s of electricity and 1.13 billion gallons of water per year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, which announced the tighter guidelines Monday.

In terms of household use, consumers could expect to save more than a gallon of water with each dishwashing cycle.

How do manufacturers feel about the rules changes? They’ll qualify for tax credits for the production of dishwashers that meet the new ENERGY STAR dishwasher criteria under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

Yes, among the many things planned for that big bank bailout, both big and small, getting the ketchup off your plates while using less energy — and water — is just one.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

PVC isn’t looked upon kindly by many environmentalists, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t without its uses — like a beautifully simple watering device that could do a lot of good for struggling plants.

The natural tendency, when you’ve planted a tree and are concerned about helping it survive, is to set a sprinkler system on heavy rotation or go out every day to water it. But sprinklers spread water far beyond where it’s needed, and a heavy one-time watering can lose a lot to evaporation and runoff.

Enter the Treegator (as in “tree irrigator”), which almost literally could not be simpler in its solution to this problem. It’s a piece of thick plastic that wraps around the tree, zipping up like a jacket and letting you fill it with up to 20 gallons of water that will slowly soak into the soil over the course of 5 to 9 hours.

Part of the idea is that slow water delivery means the soil is soaked to a deeper level, encouraging roots to grow and the tree to become stable more quickly. The most readily available benefit, though, is that you can care for a tree using far less water; for most trees, the manufacturer says that one watering a week is enough.

The Original model, which is also advertised as a perfect solution to city employees who may be responsible for scores of young trees at a time, is joined by a different design called the Treegator Jr. PRO; despite the “Jr.” moniker, it actually fits around trees with thicker trunks. (Jr. can accommodate a 6-inch trunk, while the Original fits diameters of 1-4 inches; two Originals can be zipped together, though, to fit an 8 inch trunk.) The product, which has been around since 1991, can be ordered online or found through mainstream work-supply outlets like Gempler’s.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Lance Armstrong may have to take his own advice and “dare to change” his life after being outed as the city’s biggest water guzzler, using a whopping 222,900 gallons of water in June, according to an AP report that appeared in the Austin American-Statesman late last week.

In July, consumption jumped to 330,000 gallons, putting him way out in front of the competition at about 38 times what the average household uses, according to the New York Times, which jumped onto the story.

The seven-time Tour de France winner was unaware of the ghastly volumes of water his lushly landscaped Austin compound was consuming, despite water bills that would cause most mortals to swoon. We’re talking $1,630 for the month of June and $2,460 for July, according to the AP and the NYT. He didn’t know because a management company handles his accounts.

Apparently Lance and company haven’t heard of native plantings, a common way that other Hill Country residents tamp down on irrigation needs for home landscaping. Native plants are big with environmentalists, not to mention more frugal homeowners, because they can thrive on the typical waterfall for their area, be it in Pennsylvania, California or often-parched Central Texas. (Did Lance and onetime singer girlfriend Sheryl Crow, whose enviro credentials run as deep, never discuss such things?)

Ironically one of the “Dares” you can take on Armstrong’s healthy living LiveStrong website is to drink more water: “Drink more water to flush out toxins from the body, make your skin healthier and keep hunger pangs at bay. Your body needs water to replenish muscles and maintain balance, so aim for at least eight to 12 cups daily.”

Sounds like good advice. If there’s some left.

OK, chuckles aside, the champion cyclist conceded that he could do better in the conservation category. “I need to fix this,” Armstrong told the AP. “To use that much more water (than most residents) is unacceptable. I have no interest in being the top water user in Austin, Texas.”

Perhaps he could install a gray water system to recycle household water by using it on the landscape.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Photo: © Holger Gurski | Dreamstime.com

The well was dry beside the door,
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook, if still it ran; . . .

- Robert Frost’s “Going for Water”

Every year, more about the world’s worsening water crisis is revealed: Who has potable water, sanitation and fresh drinking water – and who doesn’t.

The statistics are foreboding: The United Nations, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the Global Water Trust, World Water Council, the Pacific Institute and other international organizations warn us that by 2025, two-thirds of the Earth’s population will live in water-strapped countries. By mid-century, they say, two out of three people around the globe may not have potable water, and by the end of this century, the number of people without access to fresh drinking water – just under a billion today – could double.

Water, water, they tell us, is not everywhere.

Water that humans can use, that is. The world’s population uses about 1 percent of all the water on Earth, according to U.S. Geological Survey charts. The remaining 99 percent of the planet’s water is salty or brackish, or it is trapped in glaciers and ice.

But if scientists have the technology to desalinate water, or to super clean storm-drainage water or contaminated groundwater, isn’t that reason for optimism? And if, according to these same global entities, the number of people who have fresh drinking water has actually increased in the past couple of years, isn’t that good news?

Yes, says Pasquale Steduto. He is an expert in water-use efficiency and productivity, and has spent the past 20 years working in agriculture-water related issues. Because of his skills, Steduto is the chief of Water Service for the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. The Rome-based water scientist spoke at length to Greenrightnow.com last week, offering a big-picture perspective on the state of the world’s water.

Careful not to paint too rosy a scenario, Steduto (pictured) expresses optimism: there is more access to fresh drinking water, and more cities and countries use new guidelines on water-system efficiency. Plus, more countries are acknowledging that all humans have a basic right to clean water (such as South Africa in a recent, unprecedented high court ruling).

Multinational corporations are at least attempting, Steduto says, to look at the water crisis from a humanitarian standpoint – such as in last year’s CEO Water Mandate.

The world’s perception of water – how we use it, how we take it for granted – is changing rapidly, experts say. Whether it is due to necessity or market forces, governments and individuals are changing how they use water and decide their water needs.

“There is a shift in a way, in lifestyle choices and behaviors, ” Steduto says. “The shift of the paradigm is, ‘O.K., we cannot really go too much toward increasing the supply. Are we in a position to reduce the demand, or no?’