If you drink bubbly, this is for you...
by Christine Lepisto, Berlin on 03.12.05
A task that I find particularly odious is lugging my bottled water home. I feel like my Neanderthal forerunners hauling water up from the stream and my intelligence is further insulted by the healthy water delivered for just pennies through my ever-reliable plumbing. Were it not for my insatiable need for those blasted bubbles…. And the niggling concern remains: is the water in my bottle subject to the same rigorous testing program I know is conducted throughout the day at my local waterworks? A home water carbonator is the perfect answer to the dilemma. There are many brands available operating on similar principles, but in my opinion, the Soda Club wins in the design category with a pair of models:
the cost-effective “Edition 1” in steel and black or the elegant “Penguin”, which looks like a…well, you know. If you live in Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Iceland, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, or the USA, you can find these models in your market or coming soon.
Without electricity or batteries, the system carbonates tap water with a rechargeable cylinder of CO2, filling 50-60 liters with the original size or 100-110 with the new XL cartridge. The system has caught on widely in Germany since its introduction in 1994, with a quarter of German households boasting their own carbonator. Therefore, CO2 cartridges can be exchanged at any number of neighborhood retailers, which is profoundly less aggravation than transporting water and returning the bottles for the deposit or recycling. In the USA the need for consumer demand is clear: Soda Club is still targeting the boat and RV market, although a campaign targeting general consumers is planned. However, the Internet delivery model includes CO2 cylinder return, so the aggravation factor is even lower.
The “Edition 1” functions only with 1 liter PET bottles supplied by Soda Club due to the unusual diameter of the bottle mouth. This serves an important safety function by ensuring that normal bottles not designed to resist the high-pressure carbonation are not misused with the system. The bottles are quite robust but still suffer one curious design flaw: if you wash them in water which is too hot, the glue holding the base softens and eventually separates. The “Penguin” takes the ultimate eco-step, eliminating the plastic bottle in favor of a glass bottle, with a special bottle enclosure to ensure safety during the carbonation operation.
Pressing the top of the Soda Club machine shoots a stream of carbon dioxide, the same gas that makes store-bought sodas and waters bubbly, into the water-filled bottle screwed into the system. Your spouse likes it less bubbly but the kids want it strong? Three spritzes for lightly carbonated and five spritzes for full strength make control easy. Since replacement bottles are readily available, everyone can fill their own. Use chilled water if you really like a tingle on your tongue, since cold water can absorb more CO2.
For the full ‘enhanced beverage experience’, there are over 25 concentrates available, covering the whole range: ginger ale, raspberry, fruity isotonics, trendy mixtures, and reduced calorie flavors. However, be warned: the cola flavor will probably not replace the occasional fix for the hard-core fan of Pepsi, Coke or even RC Cola. My personal favorite, Melon, was dropped due to Soda Club’s close monitoring of the market success of each flavor, but the competition is heating up and other suppliers are stepping in with new and exciting options. Or better yet: use a squeeze of fresh lemon or some mint concentrate you cooked up from fresh mint leaves: now that’s an enhanced beverage experience. [by © C. Lepisto, 2005]
Wow... that IS a blast from the past! Here in the UK we've had "sodastream" for years and years (I remember it from my childhood in the 80s ("Get busy with the Fizzy") and i'm sure it had been around for years by then. It vanished in the disposable 90s, but seems to be making a comeback.
http://www.sodastream.co.uk/gbretail/Store.asp
As an aside, there isn't a child in the UK from a Sodastream household that hasn't at some point tried to "fizz" a bottle of milk!!
Looks interesting…
Are you in an area where you can exchange bottles locally? I'm not near a dealer and would be worries about costs mounting up…
Also, I don't see that Penguin design on sodaclubusa.com…is it not for sale in the US yet?
Fizzy milk? Hmmm...I'll have to give that a try.
I am not associated with Soda Club so I don't have all the answers but I did interview the friendly folks at Soda Club USA for my article and I understand that the Penguin will be introduced soon. You can see it on the Soda Club international web site (www.Sodaclub.com, click corporate).
Bottles do not require exchange; you buy 1 or 2 to start with and they stay with you through thick and thin. Maybe you mean the CO2 cylinders...there is a pretty hefty deposit on these. I only have to have the deposit invested one time, since they can be exchanged at just about any department store in Berlin, so I don't even keep a spare. In the USA, you probably have to do mail order and would want to stock up a couple at a time to minimize the inconvenience...it is the usual formula for USA lifestyle: your pocketbook gets all the exercise and you don't even have to walk to the store. But think of it as an investment: you get your capital back eventually and in the meantime you save $$ for every bottle of bubly water you are not buying.
Flouride is in USA drinking water ... do a websearch for what ingesting flouride does ...
Yes flouride is found in drinking water all over the world, in widely varying concentration. THere are horrible flouride poisoning problems in Bandladesh for example. In the US, roughly half of all drinking water from publicly owned systems comes from wells, the remainder being drawn from lakes and streams. Drinking water flouride in dangerous leves can be found from groundwater-based systems only. There are many examples of municipalities actually having to removel flouride from their raw well water to meet recommended standards for their customers. And there are many other examples of communities adding flouride to help prevent cavities. Many of the examples I have read of illness or disfiguration caused by high flouride intake from drinking water were associated with high ingestion from private water wells or from rural systems that did not properly remove natural flourides.
We accumulate flourides from what we eat as well as what we drink, and the swallowing of toothpaste is also a significant source. Most famously, there are several studies of recent mass flouride poisonings in China due to cooking over open coal fired stoves
I grew up in a small town with high natural flourides in the public water and had not a single cavity until I moved away after age 18, whereafter my teeth and dental bill went to h...
We all chose our own poison.
Where do you live that you consider your municipal water "healthy"?
Josh, you ask a tough question our generation faces.
For those wondering about their water, if your drinking water is supplied through your tap from your municipal treatment works, give them a call and ask for a water quality report. In the USA it may be online at http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo/index.html. Outside of the USA, you may have to put some pressure on to get an answer.
If you drink well water, you should get an analysis periodically, because the water quality can change due to refreshment, drought conditions and other causes.
Then try asking your bottled water supplier for the same. (Good luck. And remember, just because you don't know it's in there, doesn't mean it's not.) You should also ask them about the sustainability of the reservoir they are tapping, and how they are active to minimize the bottle waste impacts. I don't want to bash the bottled companies; at the end of the day, public trust is what they are selling, and at the price you pay, they can go to a lot of trouble to keep that trust.
Finally, we each have to ask ourselves "what am I going to do about it?" You pay tax dollars: you should make it known to your politicians that you expect your water supply to be high quality. If you don't trust the tap water or you want a better taste (which is different from the health question), look into at-the-tap filters: with proper maintenance you can control a higher quality for your loved ones, still much cheaper than drinking bottled.
P.S. Hard water is not unhealthy but can taste bad. The carbonated water taste is improved in my opinion, even without additional filtering. I live in Berlin, where the water is very healthy, but very hard. We use a Brita filter to reduce hardness for taste improvement.
One thing you all fail to mention; tap water tastes vile, world wide. If you were to add bubble to it with this device, it would still be undrinkable to anyone with good taste.
Tap water in Chicago tastes great. In fact its good in most cities on the Great Lakes.
Much bad taste in tap water is due to use of chloraimines by the water company Idone to save money). This gets filtered out with a point of use carbon filter. Iron bacteria are another common cause of off taste. Also filterable.
Well, I sense a treehugger mission: if we can't get the single most important human need met without tons of plastic waste and/or transport impact on the environment, we lose the sustainability battle before the first shot is fired! For more on this big topic, look for an article post coming soon!
for some good info on this topic, go here.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020208.html
the article is a few years old, but its a reliable source and good info...
- j -