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Entrepreneur sells bottled New York City tap water
- DannoHung 18y agoI'm gonna start selling sealed, empty plastic bottles! I'll call it: "Make your own bottled water"
- alecco 18y agoThere are sports water bottles, even with filters, at discount prices. Less waste. What a bizarre situation caused by consumerism.
- apsec112 18y agoI'd buy them for, say, five cents each. Bottles are useful.
- ibsulon 18y agoIf you can figure out a better filtration system than your competitors here: http://coffeetea.about.com/od/water/tp/waterbottles.htm http://coffeetea.about.com/od/water/tp/waterbottles.htm -- you may have a more viable idea than you think. Tucson's tap water is pretty bad. It's chlorinated mineral water combined with a highly mineral ground water. I drink brita at home, but it's a pain on the road. However, I drink the tap here. When I go to Phoenix, I have trouble even drinking the tap, it tastes so bad in areas.
- psyklic 18y agoThese already exist! I was looking in the cleaning supplies the other day, and they sell empty normal-sized Windex-like bottles, along with a very small bottle of concentrate!
- Hexstream 18y ago"Bonus: Comes with FREE fresh air inside!"
- patio11 18y agoYou clearly fail at marketing bottled water: "Bottled Air: Pure, fresh air from only organic sources."
- wallflower 18y agoThen there is Fiji water... Probably the most egregious bottled water (in terms of energy costs to transport) http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/askpablo-exotic-1.php http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/askpablo-exotic-1.php
- RK 18y agoI've also seen a brand in the US from New Zealand...
- gsiener 18y agoLittle known fact -- Fiji bottled water mostly comes as a byproduct of downtown Honolulu's cooling system. They use a process called OTEC: http://hawaii.gov/dbedt/info/energy/renewable/otec http://hawaii.gov/dbedt/info/energy/renewable/otec
- mark_h 18y agoTry this one, from even further afield (not to mention the hype around how it is collected!): http://tasmanianrain.com/ http://tasmanianrain.com/ (I'm from Tasmania, and I've never seen it -- I suspect you can only buy it in L.A.)
- abstractbill 18y agoIt is, after all, one of the nation's healthiest water supplies -- so fresh that in 2007 the Environmental Protection Agency said it did not need filtration. Shouldn't all tap water not need filtration? Have I been assuming too much?
- ibsulon 18y agoGo to Phoenix. It may or may not be safe, but it tastes quite foul.
- ctingom 18y agoSo true, I just buy water at the store for home.
- RK 18y agoLike ibsulon said it's all a matter of taste. When I was very young, we lived on a farm and had well water. I would go to school in the city and I hated the taste of the water there. Later we moved to the city and I remember how I then hated the taste of the water at my relatives' farm house. If given the choice between a bottle of "spring" water and filtered water, I always go with the filtered one, because I think it generally tastes better (and more like the water I drink at home). I always find the "bottled water is just tap water" meme annoying, because it generally isn't "just tap water". It's usually water that's been through reverse osmosis filtration and had added salts. That's like saying that spring water is just rain water found in your local puddle.
- jamesbritt 18y agoI moved from NYC to Phoenix and and difference in water taste was striking. I can't drink it. A trip back to New York last year was a real treat for the water alone.
- wallflower 18y ago> Shouldn't all tap water not need filtration? Have I been assuming too much? "If you don't use a water filter, your body is the water filter"
- lacker 18y agoSomeone should start doing this in San Francisco. People shouldn't be surprised by the bottled water phenomenon. You are buying the bottle, not the water, and a bottle is often worth $1.
- Ras_ 18y agoYou're buying easy access to the water.
- nostrademons 18y agoYou could just buy a Nalgene and fill it up with tap water. Or if you're really cheap, buy one bottle of bottled water, save it, and fill it up again with tap water later. I do that all the time.
- neilc 18y agoRight, but those are both less convenient than just buying water when you feel like it, and throwing out the bottle afterward. People are happy to pay for convenience (and that seems quite rational to me).
- kajecounterhack 18y agoIsn't nalgene that kind of plastic they're talking about? BPA? Cancer...?
- Zev 18y agoNalgene doesn't use BPA's. They've been focused on a few times specifically because of this. See http://www.nalgene-outdoor.com/technical/bpaInfo.html http://www.nalgene-outdoor.com/technical/bpaInfo.html
- kajecounterhack 18y agohttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24200402/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24200402/
- cellis 18y agoAt 16, Zucker started a business enticing people to pay $1 to take a swing at a golf ball. The prize for a hole in one from 150 yards: $1 million. He rented space from a driving range and persuaded an insurance company to allow him to pay a premium for a million-dollar policy. No one made it, but Zucker made some extra cash. This is one of the best ideas i've ever heard.
- nebula 18y agoFrom the insurance company's perspective, it's a $1 million bet they are taking that no one will be able to achieve it. From the participant's perspective it's a $1 ticket to a $1 million lottery. From Zucker's perspective a business (I would call it a scheme) for making money. Quite interesting. On a related note, Ansari X PRIZE (for the first private space flight) was partly funded through a similar deal with an insurance company.
- nostrademons 18y agoA lot of crazy promotions are. Jordan's Furniture (in Massachusetts) ran a promotion where if the Red Sox won the world series, all furniture purchased in the month before would be free. Their radio ads actually answered "How are you doing this? With an insurance policy. That way, if the Red Sox win, we can be happy too." And the Red Sox did win the pennant, and lots of people got free furniture. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/PersonalFinance/Story?id=3771803&page=1 http://abcnews.go.com/Business/PersonalFinance/Story?id=3771... A bunch of crazy dot-coms were also funded with insurance policies, eg. treeloot.com (the infamous punch-the-monkey ads). Berkshire Hathaway annual reports often describe a bunch of them, as they're often the ones underwriting them.
- lacker 18y agoInteresting. It's illegal to bet on baseball in most places. But Jordan's Furniture can buy an "insurance policy" that pays them money only when the Red Sox win the world series.
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- chiffonade 18y agoHe'd make a killing in LA selling NY water.
- owkaye 18y agoBut since he won't a competitor could make that killing.
- partoa 18y agoIt's bottled water!
- gsiener 18y agoThis really bothers me. California banned bottles for a reason, and now he's introducing more in NYC. If people want tap water on the go, buy a reusable bottle!
- anamax 18y ago> California banned bottles for a reason When did CA ban bottles?
- madh 18y agoDon't know about the state of CA, but the city of SF banned water bottles and water coolers (favoring tap water) within city government buildings. Makes sense plus SF water is great.
- anamax 18y ago"banned" in what sense? If I walk into city hall carrying a bottle of water, can I be arrested? Or, did they just take water out of the vending machines and cancel water cooler contracts for the peons?
- madh 18y agoThe latter. The gov't will no longer provide water coolers or bottled water as tap water is acceptable and available.
- barryfandango 18y agoAquafina and Dasani, bottled water from the Coke and Pepsi companies, are made with municipal source water that is filtered to improve the taste. Dasani here in the Toronto area comes from Brampton, Ontario tap water, and there is nothing special about Brampton tap water.
- djahng 18y agoI thought the reason Chez Panisse, Seattle, and SF stopped buying bottled water was not because of the quality of the water, but rather the wastefulness of the bottles themselves...
- stuntgoat 18y ago
- releasedatez 18y agoI remember when I was very young, I was able to drink off of tap water in CA.