Posts Tagged ‘Water’


Rain Barrels on the Riverfront, Sierra Club Great Lakes Program, Detroit RiverFront Conservency

Thursday, April 5th, 2012


If you have not already noticed our involvement in the Great Lakes program hosted by the Sierra Club (America’s oldest grassroots organization). We have partnered again for a kick-off spring event on the Detroit Riverfront. This is a three-way collaboration between the Sierra Club, The Detroit RiverFront Conservancy and Maxi Container, Inc. This event is free to the public to watch learn and listen as we build barrels and show how to attach them to a downspout on your home. You can also pickup a barrel for $60 or per-register to receive the discount and build your barrel with us! (visit: http://mirainbarrel.com/signup and click on “Rain Barrels on the Riverfront” to sign up now!) This event is going to be a fun Saturday morning (April, 14th) … bring the whole family!

For more info please call 313-444-3705 or visit http://mirainbarrel.com

Download the official Flyer here

We kindly urge you to share this event with your friends and colleagues!

ANNOUNCEMENT:
Detroit City Councilman Kenneth Cockrel, Jr. and U.S. Representative Clarke plan to attend and give remarks at the beginning of the workshop/sale.

Contact Joshua at info@mirainbarrel.com for more information on this workshop.


Bottled Water On Campus: Under “Water”

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

I have written in the past about my views on bottled water and the movement to ban it  on several college campuses. Recently, Charles Fishman, an award winning investigative journalist and author of The Big Thirst posted a blog on National Geographic website that while pointing out the numerous problems and environmental impacts of bottled water went on to argue that:

“Banning bottled water doesn’t really teach anyone anything.”

His argument, which makes a lot of sense, is that banning bottled water sales on campus, while allowing the sale of soda and energy drinks is illogical. He points out that these products are 95% to 99% water and that, “It takes 2.5 liters of water to produce every liter of Coke products”.

Fishman points out the negative environmental impacts of bottled water, stating that “It takes a fleet equivalent to 40,000 18-wheelers just to deliver the bottled water Americans buy every week”. However, he questions whether this is any different than the fleets delivering caramel-colored, caffienated water in bottles?

Fishman is no stranger to the negative impacts of bottled water. I highly recommend his 2007 article, Message in a Bottle which explores the bottled water phenomenon in depth. In that article he determines that:

“Buying bottled water is a choice … and given the impact it has, the easy substitutes, and the thoughtless spending involved, it’s fair to ask whether it’s always a good choice.”

In my opinion, that question has been answered over and over. Due to its negative environmental impacts, bottled water is only a good choice where there is not access to safe reliable tap water. On most college campuses in the U.S. safe drinking water is readily available, as are reusable bottles.

USA Today states that according to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), 14 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada have campus-wide bans, while another dozen or so have bans that cover a portion of campus. While these bans are a step in the right direction by creating awareness of the negative impacts of bottled water, by not addressing the environmental and health impacts of the remaining beverages, including soda and energy drinks, they fall far short of promoting an overall sustainable college environment.

However, recently the University of Vermont became one of the first universities in the U.S. to not only ban the sale of bottled water but to mandate that one-third of the beverages in its campus vending machines be healthy options. The policy also has the University changing its drinking fountains into bottle refilling stations so that students can use refillable bottles instead of using, and disposing, of plastic water bottles.

Wisebread.com has listed 22 reasons to stop drinking soda – Here are a few of my favorites:

  • It may lead to diabetes and heart disease.
  • Soda consumption is linked to osteoporosis.
  • Drinking cola can increase your risk of kidney stones.
  • It can take up to 132 gallons of water to produce a 2-liter bottle of soda.
  • Be it glass, aluminum, or plastic, all bottles have their environmental costs.
  • Transportation of soda pop requires a lot of fuel.

Sustainability has social, environmental and economic dimensions. Given the health and environmental impacts that soda has, the fact that the United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, is the largest soda consumer and accounted for one third of total soda consumption in 1999, suggests that Fishman is correct that only banning water bottles on campus is not enough. To truly address the societal and environmental costs, our colleges and universities should, as did the University of Vermont, require the availability in vending machines, in dorms, food service on campus, healthier alternatives to soda.

Here is a very interesting infographic about why you should not drink bottled water …
infographic about bottled water and why we should not drink it.
Let me know what you think about bottled water and soda issues on campuses around the country, please leave a comment below!


How Much Rain Water Can Our Rain Barrels Harvest?

Monday, February 6th, 2012

It hard to imagine in February that Spring, and our Rain Barrel Season, is right around the corner. We will be teaming up with the Sierra Club’s Great Lakes Program again this year to promote the use of rain barrels to help reduce Detroit’s combined sewage overflows and storm water pollution. This past weekend we had our first Live Green Fair of the season at Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek.

Last year, we sold 440 rain barrels and hope to better that mark this year. When talking to people about their rain barrels we tell them how quickly they will fill up in a good rain. In talking with Melissa Damaschke of Sierra Club’s Great Lakes Program we decided to attempt quantify the amount of rain water those 440 rain barrels could harvest in a year.

Being that I love researching an issue and spreadsheets, I immediately volunteered. Here is what I found.

The average rainfall in Detroit, MI is 32.89 inches. As reported in many news sources, 2011 was the wettest year in Detroit’s history with 47.7 inches of rainfall. (Climate Change anyone?) The average roof in the U.S. is 2400 square feet. To figure out how many gallons of water you can collect off your roof, just multiply the square footage of roof space by 0.6 gallons per square foot per inch of rain.

Plugging in this formula to the average yearly rainfall we get (2400 sq ft x .06) x 32.89 or 47,361.6 feet of space per house. Multiply this by our 440 rain barrels and in an average year we could help keep 20,839,104 gallons of water out of the storm sewers. Substituting the actual rainfall from 2011 of 47.7 inches and you get a total of 30,222,720 gallons of water saved.

Obviously, this example is based on every rain barrel we sold collecting every drop of rain from every home. In the real world, most people only hook the rain barrel up to one downspout. But even if only 1/4 of the rainwater was collected, that is over 7.5 million gallons of rain that we helped to collect for people to water their gardens, cars, etc. That is over 7.5 million gallons of rain water that did not make it’s way into the Detroit combined sewer system, did not help push raw sewage into the Detroit River and did not help cause one of the worst algae blooms in Lake Erie’s history.

It really is amazing how much good you can do with a simple thing like one of our Terra Cotta Rain Barrels.


Nothing but a Barrel

Thursday, October 6th, 2011

A few years ago, when we set out to get involved in making Rain Barrels and selling other Home and Garden products at Metro-Detroit Green Fairs, we never thought it would turn out so incredibly well. The community involvement with green fairs, charities, school and churches has helped shape our business, continuing over a hundred years of Rubin family involvement in the drum and barrel industry. Now, at Maxi, as the summer comes to a close, so does a chapter of our lives. The Green season is over, there no more events until next Spring/Summer. We all set our sights on the numerous things we have neglected due to the hustle and bustle of the season. We won’t be hibernating this winter, but a part of us will. The Green part.

I thoroughly enjoyed all of the events we were involved in (a list is provided at the end of this post). However, certain moments, or days, stand out when looking back from the corner of the autumn and winter seasons. I want to share my favorite “highlights” from this summer with all of you.

Two tents down! Currently, both of our tents need repair. One, we have no idea what happened to, and the other a storm almost swept away! At the St. Clair Shores Green Fair in the Park it was a beautiful day until warnings of a oncoming storm started to spread across the fair (since the Dream Cruise was happening on Woodward Ave. simultaneously, we just checked their twitter feed) Even though the vendors and patrons were advised to leave a little early in hopes of missing the brunt of the storm, we were among the last out of there, and our tent nearly didn’t make it out at all. I went to grab the truck for our final load of Rain Barrels, and when I arrived to our location I find my father (Richard) holding onto a tent that was in shambles. He looked like he was holding onto it for dear life, in high winds and heavy rain. This was a very intense end to a great event.

HOT, HOT, HOT! All of you remember that heat wave in June? Well we can’t forget it. We had three events planned almost simultaneously for that weekend of heat. Friday I spent in Armada while the rest of the Maxi staff was at the Ferndale Live Green Fair. I guess this is one time I lucked out, since at the Lavender Festival in Armada we had a location in the shade and the fair was on grass, not pavement. The staff at the Live Green Fair said it was sweltering hot as the intense sun reflected up from the ground. Also, the way the booths were set up didn’t allow a lot of airflow. On Sunday, I made my way to Ferndale, my father and I did the best we could, but I was definitely suffering during tear down, and was afraid I was going to pass out. My Dad had to stick me in the car with the AC on to get me to stop acting loopy. I am pretty sure I was a second away from heat stroke.

We enjoyed all of the events this year, these two weekends were exceptionally interesting, check out the list below for all of our events this year, and watch out for even more next year! Hope to see you next summer at some of our Green Events!

I tried to remember them all and hopefully, got them all of them here. Click on each to learn more. This list doesn’t include all of the Rain Barrel workshops we have done, just a few of them.

If you know of an event in Metro-Detroit (really anywhere in Michigan) that you would like us to bring our sustainable living setup including Rain Barrels, Composting, and Container Gardening, please let us know. Drop me an email at joshua@maxicontianer.com with the details.

Enjoy this slideshow of photos from our “Green Fairs” Collection of photoset’s on Flickr!

[slickr-flickr tag=”GreenFairs” type=”slideshow” captions=”on” delay=”3″]


Bottled Water Strikes Back! Or at least tries to

Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

Previously, I posted about many of the problems with our obsession with Bottled Water. These include the millions of plastic bottles that do not get recycled and will last for many years in landfills, the environmental cost of transportation, and the negative effect on our aquifers for the millions of gallons of water pumped from our ground waters, streams and lakes. Apparently, I am not alone in seeing a negative side to this phenomenon. Many people and organizations have tried or succeeded in banning the sales of bottled water.

Washington University in St. Louis, MO has banned the sale of bottled water on campus.  Other campuses banning the sale of bottled water include Seattle University and the University of Wisconsin – Stephen Point, Belmont University, Oberlin College, University of Ottawa and University of Portland. Some campuses have not banned the sale of bottled water, but no longer serve it in the dinning halls. These include Gonzaga University, New York University, Stanford University, Stony Brook University and the University of Maryland.

Universities are not the only groups trying to stem the rising tide of bottled water sales and the problem associated therewith. The Dave Mathews Band has partnered with Brita FilterForGood to reduce the amount of bottled water sold at their concerts. Brita’s FilterForGood will provide fans and performers access to free Brita® filtered water. Festival-goers can ditch their bottled water and instead fill up using reusable bottles so that everyone has an opportunity to help reduce the festival’s environmental footprint.

Faced with increasing vocal green opposition to their product, the bottled water industry has decided to fight back. The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) on Wednesday took on what it described as a “a myth repeated by some anti-bottled water activists that bottled water which comes from municipal water sources is just tap water in a bottle.” They posted a video on YouTube that purports to show how they filter and purify their water prior to being bottled.

Once again, the bottled water industry has missed the point. While one of my problems is that most of the US has access to good drinking water, making their product an unnecessary expense, the bigger issue is the bottles themselves and the energy it takes to get the product to the consumer. Add to that the fact that only about 27% of water bottles actually get recycled.  The rest end up in landfills. Even when they are recycled, they have to be transported to the recycling facility, ground up and then transported to be melted into pellets for reuse. That is not a small carbon footprint.

In addition, there are some who believe that the chemicals in PET bottles are harmful to humans. There is evidence that PET bottles may leach harmful endocrine disrupting phthalates.

The IBWA should be ashamed of themselves. They are producing a slickly made video promoting their billion dollar business focusing only on the supposed purity of their product and not the numerous harmful environmental effects of their product. There are numerous reasons why bottled water is bad for the environment. Here are a few:

  • We pay three to four times the cost of gasoline for a product that comes free out of the tap.
  • We move almost 40,000 18-wheelers worth of water around the country every week–a tremendous waste of energy resources.
  • It takes three times the water in a bottle to produce the bottle and fill it.

Clearly, bottled water is not the answer to our need for good clean hydration. Use a refillable water bottle and fill it from your tap. You will be saving money, saving resources, protecting your health and reducing your carbon footprint.


Below is an infographic detailing the top importer and exporters of bottled water in the world.

Some art students started a neat “boxed” water company in response to the major issues of the bottled water industry. Please take a minute to check out Boxed Water, started in Grand Rapids, MI. They have good sustainable ideas behind their company. If isn’t a solution at least it’s a start.
Check out this awesome new company!

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World Water Day: Tippy Tap kee…

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

World Water Day: Tippy Tap keeps it simple + saves water http://pulsene.ws/15Yuj


Rain Barrel Water Pumps are av…

Thursday, March 17th, 2011

Rain Barrel Water Pumps are available…gives your #rainbarrel the same pressure as a garden hose: http://t.co/392hTPp #green #savewater


Nestle Hires Sustainability Director – Too Late to Save Michigan’s Water

Monday, February 21st, 2011
Water Bottle
On February 17, 2011, Nestle Waters North America announced it had hired a new Director of Sustainability. We wish Michael Washburn well in his new role and in his efforts “To increase recycling rates in the United States.” We applaud Nestle for hiring someone who has worked in the nonprofit sector, and held a senior position at The Wilderness Society working on public lands advocacy.
Here at Maxi Container, however, we still hold Nestle responsible for two of the most egregious environmental policies and practices of this era.
First, they sell millions of plastic water bottles, consuming inordinate amounts of energy and raw materials to deliver a product that most of us in the U.S. has at our fingertips, potable water.
Second, they are one of the largest companies diverting a precious resource from our home state of Michigan, paying little or nothing for it, and making a large profit by selling it at a ridiculous mark up.
Nestle Waters U.S. brands include, Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deep Park, Ice Mountain, Nestle Pure Life, Ozarka, Poland Spring and Zepherhills. Nestle has had a series of battles in and out of court in both Mecosta and Osceola, MI regarding its plans for its bottling plant to bottle over 720,000 gallons of water pumped from the Great Lakes Basin and aquifer per day. Water which is never replaced and has led to drying of wetlands and streams and lowering of lake levels.  It has also severly affected nearby homeowners and farmers who depend on the aquifer for their drinking water and irrigation.
In 2009, after 9 years of litigation, Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation reached an out of court settlement with Nestle to reduce Nestle’s pumping to 218 gallons per minute.  Over an 8 hour day that is still 104,640 gallons. Over 24 hours, that is 313,920 gallons of water per day taken from our precious Great Lakes and never returned. Add to that the cost of the resources used to bottle and truck that water all over the country and you now have the makings of one of the greatest environmental villains ever!
To learn more, see our Oprep article and watch The Story of Bottled Water (2010)
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