Water Stores Popping Up All Across The Country
Everybody seems to have his or her own preferences for water. Dogs can be rather fond of drinking it out of the toilet. When I was a little kid, the best tasting water was out of the water hose in the back yard on a hot summer day. There was something about that warm liquid gushing to the back of your parched throat with just a diminutive hint of rubber. Later it was tap water poured over ice and served in aluminum tumblers that got very cold. School water was good if it came out of the new stainless steel fountains that were refrigerated. But it was lousy out of the outmoded white porcelain sinks whose pressure was so coarse you almost had to do what your mom warned against: don’t put your mouth on where the water came out. Then there were those huge bottles of office water with the pointy snow cone cups. The cups weren’t much bigger than a thimbleful, and after your one gulp, you had to crumple them up and throw them away as there was no way to stand them upright. Then, gradually, some of your relatives and neighbors, who had more disposable income than you, started getting the water filters on their kitchen sinks or the pitchers with the filters attached to them. Then there was always the decision whether to pour the tap water over ice right out of the faucet, or store it icy in the refrigerator. The two schools of though seem to be split about 50/50 on that one.
Actually, the origins of bottled water can be traced back to the earliest civilizations. Legend has it that after crossing the Pyrenees, Hannibal rested his troops in France at the Perrier spring. In the eighteenth century, spas became popular for the water’s healing effects. Cold spa waters were bottled in France for the first time in the 1850’s. In the beginning, bottled water was reserved for the wealthy. It was bottled in glass and stoneware with cork or porcelain stoppers. The first water in plastic bottles appeared in 1968. Today, there are basically two types of bottled water: that which comes from underground springs, has very dinky processing, and contains minerals and the “purified” water.
Now we have the Good Water Store and Café developed and owned by rapper Kanye West and his father. The café, which is located in a strip mall in Lexington Park, Md. has all of the trappings of a modern coffehouse: WiFi, flat-screen TV’s, and performance site. The café serves more than just water: It has a wide selection of teas, bubble tea, wraps, salad, yogurt, smoothies, and coffee, all made with premium distilled water. The owner, Ray West, hopes that the café will spur awareness of global clean water issues.
You can get three grades of water at the store: Good is 85% pure. This water is sold in bulk and is treated with a carbon filter. The Better grade is water treated with a reverse osmosis filter, which is like most bottled water. The Best grade is supposed to be 99.9% pure. It is treated with the first two methods and then hurry through a steam-distillation process.
It appears that the water store trend will continue. It is already popular in California where there are water shortages. The Beverage Marketing Corp. predicts that bottled water will be the best selling beverage by the year 2012.
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Filed under Whole House Reverse Osmosis Water Filters by on Aug 23rd, 2011. 