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Comment by peng | Hacker News Reader

Simple solution: don't use the words 'sewer' or 'reused' anywhere near the promotional materials for this product. Call it 'filtered water' or some other safe euphemism.

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Exactly. FTA, this is an identity problem rather than a safety problem. Put differently, it's a marketing & PR problem. Proponents of recycled water need to change the public perception of the water from sewage to something more palatable.

Won't last long before someone like me who hates environmentalists with a passion comes a long and shows how dirty the water is.

It's amazing how much a simple name changes things. People are typically trepadatious about eating something like blood sausage but they have no problem eating powdered bone slime so long as it's called jell-o.

And how long would it take before someone blogs about it.

I suspect the trick is to get people to think about it as "recycled water" (or whatever name gets them to accept it) while also intellectually realizing that it's treated wastewater, so when someone blogs about it, people just shrug and say "Oh, yeah, doesn't everybody know that?" I'm not sure if that's possible, but that's probably the only way it would work.

For example, the idea of passing it through an underground aquifer lets people think "yeah, I know it came from a sewer treatment plant, but now it's different". You're not trying to hide anything, you're just trying to get them to view it differently.

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