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What is bottled
water?
Bottled
water is any water that is sold by the bottle. The bottle might be
as small as 4 ounces or as large as 5 gallons. Most bottled water
comes in plastic bottles.
Where does
bottled water come from?
We
visited the Mountainwood Spring Water Company. They sell spring
water to other bottled water companies like Culligan. We found out
that spring water is a big business. The spring at Mountainwood is
part of a 75 acre, wooded property and has been used for its spring water
for the past twenty-five years. The owner said that the spring water
comes from a very deep aquifer under his land. The water came
naturally to the surface and was there when he bought the
land.
The spring runs through some rocks into a little
shed. A pipe is used to suck the water up into a larger pipe so that
it can be pumped to a building farther away. A metal disk is put at
the bottom of the spring [under the pipe] so that sand and rocks don't get
sucked up into the pipe, too.
Then the water goes to the main building.
The water is filtered [like our experiment] and
ozone is added to it there. Ozone burns up bacteria and only stays
in the water for a few hours. We didn't know that spring water was
treated before it was bottled. We found out that samples of the
water are sent to a testing laboratory twice a year even though the
Department of Environmental Protection says it has to be done once a
year. A bacteria test is done three times a week. They make
sure that the water is safe to drink.
Then the water is pumped at 120 gallons per
minute into a 5,000 gallon tank. The water is held in the tank until
it is bottled or pumped into tanker trucks.
Bottling was interesting. Many times, 5
gallon bottles are reused. These are the kind that are used in water
coolers. The first step is for a 'Sniffer' person to smell any
bottles that will be used again. He is smelling for things that
don't belong there because people might store other liquids [like
gasoline] in them before they are returned. If a bottle like that
was put into the bottle washer, it would ruin the whole load of bottles.
The bottles get washed and are put on a conveyor
belt that takes them to be refilled with water. After being
filled, the bottles are capped and stamped with a date. Now the
water is ready to be sold.
The filled
bottles are put back in the tractor trailers that brought the empty
bottles. It seemed that there was a lot of bottle reuse with
the 5 gallon bottles.
The owner of the company loves the land and respects
the water on it. He is careful to protect it so that it is safe to
drink.
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