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Captain Corea
Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Location: Seoul
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 Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 4:16 pm Post subject: Want to buy some tap water? |
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http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2894345
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Tap water in a bottle - cities say it�s a sure sell
September 01, 2008
Bouquet tap water? Dead on.
The Ministry of Environment�s plan for allowing tap water managers to bottle tap water and bring it to the market is to be carried out early next year, and city governments are stepping up efforts to commercialize their tap water products with original brands that will differentiate them from others.
Seoul came up with its own city water brand �Arisu,� followed by Daejeon with �It�s Su,� Busan with �Sunsu,� Daegu with �Dalgubeol Pure Water,� Incheon with �Michuhol True Water� and Gwangju with �Bityeoul Su.� Su means water in Korean.
The sale of bottled tap water is expected to begin early next year - a bit later than initially expected - due to the lagging legislation for a revised City Water Act. The Ministry of Environment will introduce the new bill to a regular session of the National Assembly scheduled for next month.
Since current law bans the selling of bottled tap water, city governments advertise tap water brands mainly through regional events. They believe these efforts will pay off when the ban is lifted with the revision of the law and bottled tap water products hit the market. City governments are confident of the water�s taste and quality, not to mention the low cost compared to the existing brands of bottled water.
But why would people want to buy water that they can get for free out of the tap? �Bottled tap water will be purified and bottled, so it�s basically different from home tap water that passes through rusty water pipes,� said a Ministry of Environment official.
Seoul has produced Arisu since 2001 and supplies it for free mainly to government bodies including the Blue House and the National Assembly as well as to various regional events. With a production capacity of 10 million 500-milliliter bottles a year, the city produced 3.2 million bottles in 2007. Daejeon followed Seoul with 820,000 bottles of �It�s Su� last year while the city has a production capacity of 7.3 million bottles a year. With the introduction of commercial tap water scheduled for early next year, the nation�s bottled water market estimated at 260 billion won ($247.8 million) is likely to see a major change in its landscape.
Tap water providers plan to sell their products for 200-250 won per 500-milliliter bottle - half the price of bottled mineral water currently on the market, expecting that large water consumers like big companies and public institutes will be their best accounts.
Meanwhile, some city governments are mulling over overseas expansion of their tap water businesses. Seoul has supplied 100,000 bottles - each containing 500 milliliters of tap water - to Korean volunteers and rooters for the Beijing Olympics as part of its long-term plans to advance into China.
Daejeon, which has water reserves that can serve 500,000 people a day, also intends to export �It�s Su� to water-poor countries, including China. |
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cdninkorea
Joined: 27 Jan 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 4:27 pm Post subject: |
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After watching the water episode of Penn and Teller's "Bullshit", I'm not convinced that tap water is unsafe. The only reason I don't drink it here is because the points made on the show applied to America's tap water and I don't know the Korean tap water situation.
Still, I use tap water for cooking and showering, and no ill effects yet. If anyone has any evidence that it's safe or dangerous, I'd certainly like to read it.
Oh, and here's a link to the show I mentioned (parts one, two, and three, respectively):
http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=dxcscthMSYk
http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=sdG_r2RODyU
http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=IlYwMgKFIrQ |
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peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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| Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 5:29 pm Post subject: |
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Leave it to Korea. In the west, there's something of a backlash against bottled water developing. Municipal governments are banning the bottles from their workplaces and people are asking for tap water in restaurants:
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| A tap-water snobbery is emerging. Even restaurateurs unwilling to forfeit bottled-water revenue boast of drinking from the tap at home. "On the domestic front I refuse to buy it," says Toronto chef Mark McEwan, who operates the popular North 44 and Bymark. "The waste factor with these plastic bottles just makes me crazy." Jamie Kennedy, who runs several Toronto hot spots including Jamie Kennedy Restaurant, says he sources locally bottled water in glass bottles. "Why are we bringing in water from Fiji in a nation that's got more water than any other nation in the world?" he asks. "It's air freight, it's contributing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, it's all those things that if you're environmentally conscious in the year 2007 you totally question." |
http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20070514_105163_105163 |
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Fishead soup
Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 5:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Name it Mount Fuji and sell it to Yuppies at twenty dollars a bottle. |
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SHANE02
Joined: 04 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 6:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Fishead soup wrote: |
| Name it Mount Fuji and sell it to Yuppies at twenty dollars a bottle. |
In Korea? How about "Korea Sparkling" |
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MissSeoul
Joined: 25 Oct 2006
Location: Somewhere in America
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| Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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| peppermint wrote: |
Leave it to Korea. In the west, there's something of a backlash against bottled water developing. Municipal governments are banning the bottles from their workplaces and people are asking for tap water in restaurants:
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I almost never drink water, it's always orange juice, apple juice, grape juice...etc and recently it's mineral water, it's water, but a lot of mineral in it |
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pkang0202
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 7:49 pm Post subject: |
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| peppermint wrote: |
| Leave it to Korea. In the west, there's something of a backlash against bottled water developing. |
Dasani and Aquafina is tap water in a bottle, yet its the 2 best selling brands of water in the US. Maybe a few tree huggers are complaining, but the rest of the US is buying bottled water like crazy.
I see no difference between Korea's effort to sell tap water, and Dasani or Aquafina water. |
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stealth_fighter
Joined: 22 Oct 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 11:02 pm Post subject: Re: Want to buy some tap water? |
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| Captain Corea wrote: |
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2894345
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Tap water in a bottle - cities say it�s a sure sell
But why would people want to buy water that they can get for free out of the tap? �Bottled tap water will be purified and bottled, so it�s basically different from home tap water that passes through rusty water pipes,� said a Ministry of Environment official.
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Waaack... Koreans spit in the cans/bottles after they empty them. |
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Real Reality
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2008 7:11 am Post subject: |
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39 people arrested for polluting Seoul's reservoir
by Joo Sang-min, Korea Herald (November 4, 2002)
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2002/11/04/200211040039.asp
alternative link to Naver News
http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=108&oid=044&aid=0000035561
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The prosecution said yesterday it indicted 39 restaurant owners for contaminating a huge reservoir near Seoul with untreated sewage and erecting buildings on its shore without permission from the government.
The Seoul District Public Prosecutors' Office also said it imposed fines of 3 million won to 10 million won on another 35 restaurant owners on the same charges.
The restaurant owners are accused of dumping untreated wastewater into the Paldang Reservoir 24 km east of Seoul and illegally building parking lots adjacent to their establishments. The man-made reservoir is the main source of tap water for the Seoul metropolitan area.
A 54-year-old restaurant owner, identified only as Lee, is suspected of dumping seven tons of untreated sewage into the reservoir, prosecutors said....
The arrested restaurant owners had been indicted on the same charges seven to 13 times before, but they purportedly turned a blind eye to the rules in an apparent abuse of the current light penalty system.... |
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Dev
Joined: 18 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2008 7:43 am Post subject: |
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This is an issue that should be front & center and people all over the world should be very angry about it.
There's a great lecture on water issues from AlternativeRadio.org. It's about an hour long and you can download it for the small sum of $5. It's called The Global Water Crisis by Maude Barlow. http://www.alternativeradio.org/programs/BARM001.shtml
One of the threats the public is facing is the privitization of water. The PR companies are "convincing" the public to pay for water by using scare tactics, something we are all familiar these days since 9-11.
She argues otherwise that actually bottled water is not as safe as tap water. She claims that there is only 1 government official, yes, that's 1 person, not 1 team of people, inspecting all of the bottled water in America.
Compare that with city tap water which is tested day in and day out.
The public is being duped by these PR campaigns. It wouldn't surprise me in the future if the cities produce non-potable tap water on purpose in the future and there's no choice but to buy your drinknig water.
Koreans should forget Dok-do and get on the streets to protest about having to buy tap water.
This thread should be a sticky. |
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Papa Smurf
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2008 7:46 am Post subject: |
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| Would anyone buy Seoul tap water? That stuff is nowhere near clean. Try filling up a cup of water and watch the nasty sludge it turns into over a short period of time. |
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Tommy
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
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wylies99
Joined: 13 May 2006
Location: I'm one cool cat!
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| Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2008 10:25 am Post subject: |
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| Papa Smurf wrote: |
| Would anyone buy Seoul tap water? That stuff is nowhere near clean. Try filling up a cup of water and watch the nasty sludge it turns into over a short period of time. |
Slap a Korean flag on the label along with "Made in Korea", and they'll make a fortune. |
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