I wish Europe had any drinking fountains. Even extremely-high-traffic public areas such as airports and train stations have but a few or (usually) none.
Also maybe less of an issue over here as you can generally just ask for a free glass of tap water in most places that serve drinks.
It's literally rule 0 of hospitality, to offer those in need a glass of water.
The only way it's awkward is if the place is very busy.
Good thing indeed, but then you go ie to France where you have sometimes such fountains too, and often reverse applies - don't drink unless its singed as drinkable.
What were they thinking?
Shared glasses were quite safe because every machine had special button to clean the glass with pressurized technical water (several calibrated jets) with some chlorine in it. People cleaned the glass with it before pouring soda water.
USSR has been eco/green paradise: no plastic bags or wraps. Meat was wrapped in paper. Milk, butter and sour cream were poured into whatever container buyer had provided. Glass bottles, paper and alike have been routinely recycled mostly by kids as there was small payment for bringing that stuff.
It’s only after the fall of the Soviet Union that shit with plastic poured into. As well with the fall of recycling, morals, etc. (say what you will about hollywood films of the 90s — nothing upstanding about it).
"The former Soviet Union was the world's second largest producer of harmful emissions. Total emissions in the USSR in 1988 were about 79% of the US total. Considering that the Soviet GNP was only some 54% of that of the USA, this means that the Soviet Union generated 1.5 times more pollution than the USA per unit of GNP" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/095937...
As for your article, I don’t have access to the PDF, so I cannot verify it.
The place I grew up sometimes I could see Elbrus even though it is almost 300 km away. That’s for air pollution.
> in the early 1990s the air pollution became an issue of great public attention
This as well may be the coordinated effort to bring down every remnant of Soviet industrial force. You have no idea how many factories have been deliberately bring to their knees and closed down by “effective” new management.
The same way “green” policy is used today for economic warfare (just to think Germany being so stupid as to close their nuclear plants).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_distance_observations#Gro...
So, assuming you weren't at sea-level, it's reasonable that you could see the peak of this mountain from 300km away.
However, seeing the peak of a mountain on the horizon isn't sufficient. You'd need to see a large portion of the mountain on the horizon in order to determine that it's actually the mountain you see in the distance, and not a closer peak that's less tall. This means that the observer would need to be at sufficient altitude themselves in order to view the mountain from this distance. I don't know enough about the math to calculate the necessary altitude required by the observer, but I would estimate an elevation of many hundreds of meters above sea level to be necessary. If anyone else can calculate this better, I would love to know how to find the answer myself.
Without knowing the general area of where you were, all I can say is that it sounds very unlikely.
There have been photos even from Rize, Turkey 300km, albeit very-very blurry.
But I think you are most definitely right: I checked and it’s only 240 from the straight line in my case (my memories of something closer to 290 is more about road distance)
Nothing wrong about it as water temperature in pipes is regulated based on the temperature outside if not at building-level (not uncommon) but at least at heat-station providing hot water to several buildings.
When Poland got independent in 1989 and energy prices got real - everybody started buying cheap styrofoam and in a few years we cut our energy usage for heating 3 times. It was CRAZY inefficient because of the pricing of energy vs materials in Warsaw pact.
This "mass styrofoamisation" still haven't happened in Russia to that degree BTW. It's still wasting crazy amounts of energy in all these old commieblocks without insulation.
Modern construction with heavy insulation certainly reduces energy use, but at the cost of air quality. Even more modern construction includes air exchangers, but there's a lot of buildings with insufficient airflow.
As for glasses, at least in Lithuania those were stolen often. It was common for the machine to have only one glass.
But, of course, maybe it was different in other parts of the union.
Soviet Union was green not because of morals, but because it was poor and couldn't afford single use packages. I remember when Nutella entered my country, the empty Nutella jars were washed, kept and used as glasses for drinking - because buying new glasses was hard or expensive.
>And yes, most glasses have never been stolen.
I assume that's only because they were chained and in crowded places. Whole eastern Europe of that time was a thief paradise with casual theft almost completely normalized. (source: I am from Eastern Europe)
That’s why it so ironic sometimes to see west slowly turning into soviet union :-)
From recycling to cancel culture, just with 100 years of delay
You do understand that sand is one of the most common things on earth (hence the glass is dirt-cheap).
Just as an example of those mentioned faceted glasses: their price was 7 or 14 copecks (good thing every one of them had the price stamped on the bottom). It’s less than the price of bread.
The only thing I could imagine about those Nutella being used as glasses is common “this is a thing from the coveted west”.
We're doing a pretty good job of making it a lot less common: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/problem-our-dwin...
There's even such a thing as Sand Theft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_theft
There's a lot that goes into the cost of a good rather than the value of the raw ingredients.
If only it worked this way I could finally afford a 4090
I think it's quite common and not especially linked to poverty.
For the smaller containers with a snap on lid only though, because the large Nutella jars with a screw on lid are unsuitable for glasses, but they can contain sauces, paint, screws or nails.
I'm glad we live in the 21st century where we can afford single use packages. It will only cost us our civilization: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/?int...
What GP described might have been first and foremost the signs of a poor society, but then this only gives credence to the whole "decadent rich" line. Single-use plastics are a sign of a lazy and wasteful society.
Some paradise.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0959378094...
Has nothing to do with it. You simply lied. Would have called you out no matter the subject.
Just google “макулатура” and “пункт приема бутылок”
USSR was poor as fuck therefore is saved money on packaging whenever it could. It was occasionally ecologically benefitial as well, but to go from that to "eco/green paradise" is absurd.
USSR was polluting like crazy, significanly more than more developed economies. It treated its citizens as replacable cogs, to the point that after Chernobyl catastrophe it was Sweden not USSR that informed people there was, in fact, a catastrophe.
USSR was denying any problems with asbestos, calling it "asbestos hysteria" of the west. Russia is still doing it to some degree, and russian asbestos mines are causing significant health problems to the people living there. About 60 000 of them.
Soviet heavy industry was ignoring any health, safety and ecology concerns in the name of cost-saving. The reason most "commieblocks" are gray is the air pollution from all that industry and 19th century tech heating with unfiltered coal-fired powerplants.
USSR accidently destroyed Aral Sea. As in - it's no longer there. That's some amazing ecologic paradise.
The only reason Russia isn't the most polluted country in the world is that it's the biggest country in the world by area and very sparsely populated. There's a lot of it to devastate.
This type of arguments are still as annoying as the first time I've heard it. Reusable containers just don't satisfy modern day safety standards.
If they could get away without paying for packaging they will happily do so. They can't because chances of poisoning followed by lawsuits becomes real at scale, causes including not just accidental contamination but also terrorism.
Reusable containers are currently not cheaper and so they're not used - but the fact that they're not used for non-food items is pretty indicative that it's a cost thing, not a safety thing.
It really feels strange that this level of basic understanding hasn't permeated across, at least, developed nations. The humanity collectively got as much as 6x mortality variance _among developed countries_ with COVID. It's appalling if things like this had been a contributory factor.
These were both common in mid-century US too. These practices were slowly discontinued because other packaging was cheaper and more sanitary, especially as foods were packaged further away from the end consumer.
And when buying meat fresh at a butcher in the US, it's still fairly common to get it wrapped in paper.
(Basically if using your own container, you put it on the scale, hit "tare" which zeros the scale with the container and then you fill it up. Most bulk sales are via standard plastic containers the store has which are already in the machine's database.)
I'm basing this on nothing, by the way, but it feels like a fun hypothesis.
Often the fountain will just drain into the dirt nearby, which means it is often the only green area when it's a desert fountain.
In the US, they seem to exist in offices and schools. Airports tend to have them, and often with a bottle filler on the side, which is great since we can't carry water through security.
But, just walking down the street, truly public water? Is that a thing anywhere in the US, or elsewhere?
I'm struggling to think of any parks or high pedestrian areas around me that don't have a public fountain, nor in any of the cities I've lived in. Like, yeah, you're not going to have a fountain out in the middle of a parking lot. But they, to my recollection, seem to be everywhere that people tend to be walking a lot.
As for Europe, they also tend to be in a lot of high pedestrian areas, but really only in southern Europe (Italy, Spain, etc). In northern Europe it seems that everyone is just fine with being constantly dehydrated.
The park across the street doesn't have one. There are none in the town center (gotta buy Starbucks or similar).
And I don't recall seeing any public ones in downtown DC, other than the Mall and Smithsonian areas.
I already stated they do exist in quasi-public spaces (airports, offices, etc).
Like, if I'm running errands downtown, and I'm not in the tourist zone, there really isn't much without ducking into an office (that might be locked on the weekend).
Maybe a state level law thing then.
More and more the newer ones are also "dog watering stations" which is basically a foot-operated drinking fountain with a slow-drain bowl (or just a concrete bowl with no drain).
Even parks that don't have restrooms will often have a fountain.
Thought to be fair I don’t think I’ve many in Oslo city.
I generally just ask a cafe to fill my water bottle if I need to. I’ve never had anyone refuse
The city of Amsterdam has 500 fountains or bottle filling stations[1]. The rest of the country has at least 2400 more[2].
[0]: https://www.wateratairports.com/topic/schiphol-airport-ams/ [1]: https://www.waternet.nl/service-en-contact/drinkwater/gratis... [2]: https://drinkwaterkaart.nl/waar-kan-ik-gratis-water-tappen/