environment

Bottled Water: Why It’s Bad for You, the Environment, and Water – Part III

HydrateLife Bottled Water, Environment, Sustainable Practices 19 Comments

Part III: Why Bottled Water is Bad for Water Welcome to Part III of Bottled Water: Why It’s Bad for You, the Environment, and Water.  In Part III I’ll be looking at the impacts that bottled water has on water itself (and therefore on the communities and environment near this water).  First I wanted to say thanks to everyone that has been commenting on Part I and II.  It’s been great to hear your thoughts and discuss the tragedy whichcontinue reading

Bottled Water: Why It’s Bad for You, the Environment, and Water – Part II

HydrateLife Environment, Facts/Statistics, Water Pollution 35 Comments

Part II: Why Bottled Water is Bad for the Environment Welcome to Part II of the series Bottled Water: Why It’s Bad for You, the Environment, and Water.  In Part I I talked about why bottled water is bad for you, and now in Part II I’ll be talking about why bottled water is bad for the environment.  There was a great response to Part I, and thank you to everyone that commented on it.  If you missed Part Icontinue reading

Summary of Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Resources: Separating the Frack from the Fiction; A Report by the Pacific Institute

HydrateLife Environment, Studies, Water Pollution 6 Comments

Today I wanted to give a summary of a report put out by the Pacific Institute titled Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Resources: Separating the Frack from the Fiction.  The Pacific Institute, which has been around for 25 years, released the paper which was written by Heather Cooley and Kristina Donnely in June of this year.  For this report they conducted extensive interviews with experts from state and federal agencies, academia, industry, environmental groups, and community based organizations from throughout thecontinue reading

The Niger Delta: Soaked in Oil

HydrateLife Environment, Water Pollution 8 Comments

Like many places around the world the Niger Delta is cursed.  It’s cursed by the vast resources that lay underground in the form of oil.  Since the 1950’s the Nigerian government along with multinational corporations have been extracting oil from this region and devastating the ecosystem and its people.  Today, Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer, extracting 2 million barrels of oil a day, leading to oil making up 80% of their national revenue. So who’s pumping all of thiscontinue reading

Why Hydroelectricity from Large Dams is Not Clean

HydrateLife Dams, Environment 4 Comments

It’s common, if not the rule, for hydroelectricity from dams to be listed as clean energy.  With approximately 845,000 dams worldwide (~80,000 in the US) it seems like people have for a long time believed this to be true, and you can’t really blame them.  Dam building is often a very political issue and politicians often lead people to believe this myth.  Besides that, without knowing all of the facts it would seem like they are clean; you have acontinue reading

Protecting our Waterways Naturally: Riparian Buffers

HydrateLife Environment, Health, Water Pollution, Water Treatment No Comments

You’re standing on a farm looking out over a huge group of cows to your left.  The smell is pretty bad, and you’re disgusted by the cows walking around in their waste without a care in the world.  You glance over to your right and notice a beautiful stream that runs along the farm and then continues on.  All of the sudden the clouds open up and a downpour hits. As the rain comes down the ground is getting saturatedcontinue reading

The Plight of the Gulf of California

HydrateLife Environment 1 Comment

  Let’s talk about the beautiful Gulf of California, which exists in all of its beauty because of the flow of freshwater from the Colorado River.  A flow that is reaching the Gulf less and less nowadays.  You see, since the damming of the Colorado River the amount of water that reaches the mouth of the river in Mexico has dropped, and in certain years no water reaches the mouth.  That’s a problem. The Gulf of California is important forcontinue reading

Are Nanoparticles the Water Detox Solution We’ve Been Looking For?

HydrateLife Water Pollution, Water Technology, Water Treatment No Comments

Do you ever drive by a gas station that’s fenced off and there are workers digging a huge hole in the ground?  That’s because tanks that hold the gas have leaked and contaminated the ground under the station.  Around the world there are thousands of sites where toxic chemicals have been spilt accidentally or dumped in the past and left.  Up until the 1970s it was widely believed that the soil would act like a natural filter and clean thecontinue reading

Another Damn Dam: The Grand Renaissance Dam

HydrateLife Dams, Environment 1 Comment

A while back I wrote about the Gibb III Dam in Ethiopia and the efforts by the Friends of Lake Turkana to stop it (FoLT and the Gibb III).  Today I’m going to write about another dam being built in Ethiopia (coincidentally by the same Italian company), the Grand Renaissance Dam.  This dam which was started about a year ago is on the Blue Nile and will be the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa.  When completed it is saidcontinue reading

A Different way to Treat your Wastewater

HydrateLife Water Technology, Water Treatment 7 Comments

In the never ending quest to clean up wastewater there are thousands of different products that have been invented.  One of these products is called the Living Machine.  It’s less of a product though, and more of a wastewater treatment system.  The Living Machine uses the knowledge that natural wetlands are great filters for wastewater and applies that knowledge to provide an ecological, cost effective, and sustainable solution. The original concept for the Living Machine was thought up during thecontinue reading

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