Tag Archive for: bottled water

10 Weird Water Items Available Now on Ebay

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It’s the Thirsty in Suburbia Super Water Flea! Following are 10 hand-picked examples of rare, unusual and weird water-related merch just waiting for your winning bid. (We count the purchase of vintage items towards your recycling/reuse do-gooder ranking!)

1. Brass Dowsing Rods Finds water! Plus treasure and lost items, too! These rods are made of brass with copper handles. The handle/sleeves give the rods plenty of room to move and any dent or bend won’t affect the rods. Get your shovel ready, your new well is on the way! Starting bid $9.99

2. Drive someone slowly, excruciatingly mad with the  New Dripping Tap Noise Maker Joke $5.99 Hide this little item and when the lights are out It it makes a noise like a dripping tap. When the lights go on, it stops…so the victim never finds its.

3. For $299 a Vintage Retro 2-head porcelain water fountain. Made in the USA, too! Seller notes it would be an interesting detail to a home or business. I’ll say! (You pick it up in central New York…will not fit in a flat-rate box.) Don’t laugh… remember the fab thing that Katie made from an old tub?)

4. Jack and Jill Water Carrier vintage pins/fur clips Their little moonglow stone bodies, cute buckets of blue stones and pave rhinestone outfits make toting heavy water buckets seem glamorous! Lobbyists, these would be awesome to wear when you’re power-tripping up “The Hill” to fetch some support for your water issue! Get the set for $139.99.

5. Vintage desert water bag “Imported flax” water bag is in “very good condition with a few small water spots as you would expect.” This is what your Grandpa would have on hand should his automobile overheat over while motoring through the desert miles from civilization. Now? Might make jaunty decor for a Santa Fe TGI Fridays.

6. Filter, schmilter. The bidding starts at $3.50 for this 10 oz. box of Old Settler Water Clear. It was made in Findlay Ohio and has the price of 13 cents stamped on the top of the box. The box includes directions on how to use the product to clear dirty water. (Better jump on this… it’s no longer “Sold by All Grocers.”)

7. For $4.95, buy a Rain of Las Vegas Nevada Water Treatment Patch. Original purpose and origin not known. Why buy such a thing? Because then you would have it. Simple as that.

8. $9.95 Bottled Water from Sheri’s Ranch, the “world famous brothel” in Pahrump, Nevada. I can’t decide whether it is sensible or senseless to buy bottled water at a brothel. Buy with confidence, I’m told “the government” regulates both of them.

9. Black Water Clear Water Magic Trick Amaze your friends and enemies by turning ordinary water an eerie dark black and then clear again! $17.50 (This item Involves mysterious unidentified chemicals.) Water treatment professionals: try this stunt at your next public forum and I’ll bet you win unanimous support for your proposal!

10. Vintage Ohio Art Tin Litho Water Pump featuring Jack and Jill! 10″ tall antique toy in very good condition. A nostalgic throwback to the old days, when children played outside and running water was a workout. Two bidders already in, $20.49 at this writing.

Spotting Dangerous Predators

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From the Flickr photostream of www.visitbritian.co.uk, a photo that sets up an interesting analogy on predatory marketing! Is it your “Jaws” devouring that bottled water?

If I Could Place Ads on a Bottle

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With demand dropping and prices with it, the bottled water industry needs new business models, and UK-based Soak Media is promoting one tried-and-true idea. Borrowing a page from ad-supported free media, Soak is passing out free ad-laden bottled water to Londoners this summer.

Soak Media friendly staffer

Soak Media friendly staffer

Billing itself as “the refreshing way to talk to Londoners”, the site urges advertisers to…

Get hot and bothered London commuters to engage with your brand by advertising on one of the deliciously cold bottles of mineral water we’ll be handing out across the London commuter network this summer. And don’t forget: this summer’s going to be an absolute scorcher!

Soak Media’s video details their right-time, right-place strategy during “London’s hottest months of July and August.” The company will also do “leaflet tip-ons and bottles moulded to any shape.” And don’t forget, the water is “handed out by our very friendly staff” and enjoys “50 minutes in-hand time.” (And an eternity in a landfill after that?)

Oddly the video ends with the cryptic and vague statement, “all our profits go to charitable causes.” Guess I’ll let that one soak in for a moment.

Unpolluted Krapjanka, New Slim Bottle

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Original photo, NOT retouched or altered!

Today, some marginal ThirstyinSuburbia PR for “Blaifa,” a Macedonian entrepreneur well outside of slick Western marketing networks, the force behind an apparently small business with big dreams of riches to be made in the packaged water business.

Blaifa has listed his bottled water brand KRAPJANKA on tradeboss.com, described as “the worldwide B2B marketplace,” and an “Import/Export Business Directory.”

It is possible that, technically, Krapjanka isn’t yet in actual production. That’s OK, though—they have mocked up a conceptual bottle to give prospective customers an idea of what the real deal will look like should discussion and negotiation develop into a deal! (Apparently this brand sports a new, slimmer bottle design. Or more likely, someone was a bit careless with the photoediting scale tool!)

No matter, as the product description clearly states, it comes from an unpolluted region, and it is excellent!

Excellent natural mineral water from the mountain spring in unpolluted region in R.Macedonia, South Europe. Packaging in plastic bottles (0.5 L, 1.5 L and 5 L). Our water is with top – quality and very well balance physicochemical composition. For more information and direct orders, please contact us at …

Krapjanka brand bottled water on tradeboss.com

Still Unaware of Recycling? More Pompous Education

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It’s bottled water, Nestle, PR Newswire, Facebooktwitterblogwebsitesocialmediaplan, all wrapped into one. It’s brand-new Re-Source(TM) natural spring water, Nestle’s new greener-than-thou entry into the more-environmentally-aware bottled water market. They’re out to raise our awareness and educate us about recycling! And, we’ve got Whole Foods, greenopolis.com, Cradle to Cradle(SM) AND Keep America Beautiful to round out the festive enviro-bandwagon.

Capsulized, what this PR-social media onslaught is all about:

  1. Yet another pricey bottled water (700 ml, $1.69) but in a 25% recycled plastic container focused on “raising consumer awareness about the importance of recycling.”
  2. A sparse and complex system for recycling those bottles at few selected Whole Foods markets. (Initially, 26 in California and Arizona with “goals” for more.)
  3. A stated objective to achieve a 100% recycled Re-Source(TM) container via burdening guilt-laden consumers to return the bottles while “tracking” their efforts via web.
  4. A chump-change (for Nestle, anyway) maximum $200,000 non-profit contribution solely dependent on the tortured efforts of the above-mentioned consumers.

Wow! For those who love bottled water’s convenience, here’s a bottled water that’s actually MORE labor intensive than reusable water bottles! While bottled water has it’s appropriate time and place, WHO would do this? Who would actually buy this water, haul the empties back to their Whole Foods re-source-branded GreenOps(SM) tracking station (if available), register and track their efforts via the web… all for Nestle’s 100% recycled goal, a nickel per bottle for Keep America Beautiful, and a ready supply of overpriced packaged water?

Call me a cynic, say I’m ridiculing a noble effort. The simple truth, as I see it, is: recycling is a third choice behind the higher goals of NO-USE and RE-USE. I don’t believe we should congratulate ourselves on recycling a resource that we didn’t need to consume it in the first place.

Use only what you have to. Re-use whatever you can. Don’t be wasteful. Simple.

UPDATE/AFTERTHOUGHT: For more reading pleasure, awareness and education, check out Waterwired’s post and link earlier this year to the 2008 corporate citizenship report from Nestle Waters North America. (Pretty infographics, judge the content for yourself!)

Another Dirty Deed Blamed on Bottled Water

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Newsflash! A celeb stoops low and points the finger at everyone’s favorite whipping boy, bottled water! Celebrity gawkers are in a tizzy about photos and video apparently showing an intoxicated Jaime Pressly (a 32-year-old actress on My Name is Earl) urinating in public outside of a Los Angeles bar.

She has issued a denial on her Twitter page, blaming it on the bottle–the water bottle, that is. Her story: as part of a bridal shower dare, she was actually emptying a bottle of water onto the sidewalk.

“Notice my hand in the back? It’s pouring a bottle of water! C’mon guys! Do you think I would really pee in the entry way to the Abbey in broad daylight!”

After videos were posted to YouTube, however, the gossipers aren’t buying it. I don’t see any bottles either! And even if the tale were true, she certainly didn’t recycle that bottle, now did she?

Bandai Bottled Water Fun Enhancer

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Now that we’re soooo bored with the all clever branding and unusual bottles, leave it to Japanese toy company Bandai to freshen bottled water consumption with their new “magic pet” micro-toys, little sea creature gizmos that swirl and swim about inside your bottled water, producing several minutes of pure entertainment. Choose the Jellyfish, Squid or Octopus. And importantly, be sure to sip rather than gulp lest you choke on your $6 investment!

Following, some screen shots from their website, but if you visit the site yourself, be sure to catch the mesmerizing movie! (As far as I can tell, these are available only in Japan.)

Saints and Sinners, Drink Up

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What water do they serve in hell? I’m guessing none. As the bottled water battle degrades into an old-fashioned good-versus-evil struggle, best to hedge your bets like Liquid Salvation brand (“Pure Water for an Impure World”) with both angel or devil graphics as you prefer.

Their brand tagline “Ask for the Flask” refers to the pocket-ready bottle that’s modeled after flasks popularized by WWII fighter pilots.

(Photo from lytok.com)

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Liquid Salvation Water from JOSEPH MASTERS on Vimeo.

Snapped! School Bottled Beverage Brouhaha

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A teacher who’s “smarting” and a Mum who’s “sorry”..a sad, crazy tale on how a bottle of “flavored, not fizzy” water (the “wrong type” that violated the school’s “healthy eating policy”) escalated into possible jail time for a parent who “snapped.” From the July 17th Belfast Telegraph,  

A mother-of-six who has been warned she could be facing jail after assaulting her son’s primary school teacher during a heated row over bottled water today said she desperately regrets the attack.

 Downpatrick woman Lisa Blythe said she “just snapped” and threw a bottle in the teacher’s direction after being told she had sent her 10-year-old son to school with the wrong type of water.

Blythe has been warned by a District Judge that she could now be facing a prison sentence after she pleaded guilty to assaulting the primary six teacher in St Colmcille’s Primary School in Downpatrick.

District Judge Mr Mervyn Bates adjourned sentencing to next month telling the 34-year-old that teachers need to be protected “from people like you”.

Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph Blythe, from Marian Park, said she was upset when she discovered the teacher had not allowed her son to drink the water because it was flavoured and therefore against the school’s healthy eating policy which only allows plain, still water.

She said she had been under a lot of pressure at the time following her mother’s death and that she just snapped during the showdown with the teacher.

“I knew afterwards that I had gone too far but I was just so worked up at the time it all got too much for me,” she said.

Blythe said that on the morning of the row she’d forgotten to pack her son’s water bottle.

On the way to school she stopped off at a store and grabbed a bottle of water which turned out to be flavoured.

She said when she went to the school later that day to collect her son, who she said has been diagnosed as suffering from the highest level of Attention-Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), he told her that he had not been allowed to drink his water because the teacher said it was fizzy.

“The water wasn’t fizzy, it was flavoured. I poured it into a cup and went to speak to the teacher to prove it was not sparkling. She kept telling me it was school policy, but I was raging as my son needs to drink with his medication. I lost it and I did curse at her. I then just snapped and said well here, take it, and threw the bottle down. It was an empty plastic bottle of water.

“As I walked away I knew I shouldn’t have done it. By the time I got into the car I knew I had been stupid so I went back into the school to apologise, but nobody could find her. I went to pick up my other children and then called back at the school to see her, but the school principal asked me to leave.”

Blythe said that the incident was the culmination of a number of difficulties in her personal life and frustrations over schooling for her son.

“I was very upset over my mother’s recent death and my husband had also just had a cancer scare. Dealing with my son who has ADHD and five other children, some who also have medical problems, was also a big strain. Everything just got too much for me on that day. I didn’t go with the intent to touch the teacher. I am sorry for what happened. I admit I used foul language when I swung the bottle and then left the school.”

She added: “The life has gone out of us as a family because of all this. It was a silly stupid five minute thing that got out of hand.”

Earlier this month Downpatrick Magistrate’s Court was told that there had been ongoing problems between Blythe and the teacher about teaching the boy. The court heard that during the row the school caretaker had to close some classroom doors so children could not hear Blythe’s “abusive language” and that she then threw the bottle of water at the teacher causing her left hip to “smart”.

District Judge Mr Mervyn Bates told Blythe: “An argument about a bottle of water should not have flared up in this way. People, like teachers, will be protected in this court from people like you.”

Awesome Trash for the Wardrobe Stash

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I’d like to see Jennifer Aniston and her “Smartwater” go green on the red carpet in this. That way, she could look trashy in a positive way (and smarter, too!) In this age of new austerity, what fashionista wouldn’t kill for this fabulous trash-art necklace, crafted from PET bottles and fishing line by Turkish architect Gulnur Ozdaglar. (See more of her beautiful work here or at http://gulguvenc.blogspot.com/

From an article on columbia.edu.,

With the help of an open flame, scissors, a knife and a soldering iron, she transforms soda bottles into brooches, necklaces, vases and even plastic “petal” chandeliers, which sell for $250. Her pieces were recently featured in a well-known Turkish design store, and she is now working to win the sponsorship of environmental organizations in her country.

“Recycling is not one of the bigger issues in Turkey, as we are dealing with unemployment, human rights and more, but I think it is everyone’s responsibility to live without harming the earth,” says Ozdaglar. “I, all of my friends, and all of my neighbors, did not put one single bottle to waste last year. I make something out of all of them.”