12/01/2019   English German
  Edition # 131  
San Francisco, 12-01-2019

Drinking water at SFO airport
Figure [1]: At SFO airport, there are no more plastic water bottles.

Michael Air travelers often get so thirsty on long-haul flights that flight attendants can hardly keep up with refilling drinks. Therefore, it is advisable to carry bottled water. But, oh dear, unfortunately, airport security does not allow liquids to be brought through, so it has become customary for travelers to quickly purchase a plastic bottle of water at the gate area at an exorbitant price. Did I say plastic?! For heaven's sake, plastic waste is no longer acceptable in green San Francisco!

Figure [2]: At the "Hydration Station," travelers fill their brought bottles with filtered tap water.

Drinking American chlorinated tap water is also not everyone's cup of tea, and that's why the operators of the newly redesigned Terminal 1 at SFO Airport, which has recently been named "Harvey Milk Terminal" after the well-known gay activist from the 70s (Rundbrief 07/2006), installed so-called "hydration stations", where passengers can fill their own containers with Brita-filtered tap water. To prevent anyone from placing the rim of their bottle, which might be contaminated with germs, directly on the spout, the stations activate the water stream using a light sensor when a container is held under an upward-facing hole in the chrome frame of the station.

Figure [3]: The kiosk sells these reusable bottles for five dollars.

Anyone who has forgotten to bring their own bottle can purchase pre-filled reusable bottles with water at the kiosk for four or five dollars, available in two different sizes. By the way, the filling machine looked strangely familiar to me: in our fitness center at Apple, where no plastic bottles are distributed anymore, there is exactly the same unit from the company "Elkay." With this, San Francisco officially enters the heavenly realm of environmental angels.

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