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Even though I have a Brita in my home, I still find myself buying too much bottled water. Would this change if I committed to a reusable beverage container? Why not–I’m already Brita groupie. The LA Times has the story on the recent surge of bottled water manufacturers goading each other into going green:
The company that makes Brita water filters teamed up Monday with Nalgene, a manufacturer of reusable beverage containers, to launch the FilterForGood campaign, aimed at weaning people off throwaway bottles.
“Refilling our own personal water bottle with filtered water from the tap requires far less energy and wastes almost no resources relative to bottled water,” said Josh Dorfman, a spokesman for the campaign and the author of “The Lazy Environmentalist: Your Guide to Easy, Stylish, Green Living.”
At FilterForGood’s home page, you’ll immediately be reminded that:
Last year, Americans threw away 38 billion plastic water bottles, about $1 billion worth of plastic1. That’s a huge waste, especially considering 1.5 million barrels of oil - enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year - were used to produce the bottles2. And that’s not even including the oil used for transportation.
What do you think–is giving up bottled water hard to do? I suppose looting craft service should count, too…
Comments (18)
Comment
I have never been a big fan of bottled water - partially because most of it tastes weird (Omaha tap water rules), but also because of the price. If I’m going to spend a dollar or more on a beverage, it better be something more exciting than water. Of course, buying bottled pop or juice instead of water doesn’t help the environment much, but at least I don’t feel like I’m being swindled (as much).
posted by Molly on 8-15-2007 at 7:08 am
Bottled water tends to be more convenient and have a reliable taste. (I tend to drink spring water - about $5 for 32 bottles at Sam’s Club.) I spent too much time in areas with lousy-tasting water or in houses where the pipes gave the water a bad taste.
We keep bottles of water in a minifridge on the second floor for when we’re in the family room or getting ready for bed, which tends to be where we drink the most water. In the kitchen fridge, we’ve got a Brita filter pitcher and we’re trying to use it more.
It’s hard to make the switch more consistently, though. The convenience of grabbing a cold bottle of water and tossing the empty bottle in a recycle bin is hard to give up when the alternative is grabbing a clean glass, pouring the water (often having to refill the pitcher), then having to wash the glass and put it away. Drinking from the tap is a less reliable flavor and would add the step of adding ice because water from the tap isn’t very cold. The bottles are also easier to transport and protect the drinking water from our thirsty cats, who’d always rather drink from our glasses than out of their bowl.
It’s no justification, I know. It is always hard to give up convenience, especially when it comes to something as vital as fresh drinking water.
posted by Debi on 8-15-2007 at 7:59 am
I’ve been using bike bottles for years. We fill them from the reverse osmosis tap and keep them in the fridge, so they’re easy to grab when on the run. We do wash them regularly, and don’t feel obliged to use the nozzle when we’re in the office (simply pour into coffee cup).
My problem with plastic bottles for water, soda, etc is that I find so many of them discarded by the roadside and places I enjoy. Takes a long time for the plastic to disintegrate, so they’re a litter problem as well as an energy sink. They can be handy in a pinch, but life was good before they arrived.
posted by Tom on 8-15-2007 at 8:13 am
i got excited when i saw this blog title and thought instantly of MY nalgene, which i use religiously. and THEN, the post was ABOUT nalgene’s awesomeness.
i have to admit though that i used to think people who used nalgenes were dumb, because they don’t keep water cold and they are inconvenient. but then i walked 500 miles across spain with my nalgene and it never let me down. now i can’t go anywhere without it (and i’m totally used to less-than-ice-cold water).
it was not a hard transition. maybe buy two or three, so you always have one cold in the fridge. and i DO feel guilty throwing away water bottles. seriously, it’s wasteful. DO IT!
posted by Katie on 8-15-2007 at 8:14 am
Nalgene for the win! Mine is usually by my side or in my murse. What would be really sweet though is if there were lots of “urban springs” in US cities to be able to refill your bottle on the go. Also what would be great is if there were portable filter attachments for Nalgene bottles. In NY, the tap water tastes fine to me, but in my hometown in NJ, it tastes a bit chlorinated without a good Britta-ing.
posted by zack on 8-15-2007 at 8:28 am
Looks like I’m not the only one to have that idea. Google:
patent for water filter portable attach nalgene
posted by zack on 8-15-2007 at 8:30 am
We use bottled water when traveling and staying in hotels. Hotel tap water always has a nasty, water-softened taste, and I have a real hard time shelling out $1.50 and up from hotel vending machines. A case from Sams for $5 pretty well takes care of us for a good part of the summer.
When at home it’s strictly tap. We used to use a britta pitcher until I realized the only reason the britta water tasted better was that it was chilled. A pitcher of regular tap water left in the fridge tastes just as good where we’re at.
posted by EV on 8-15-2007 at 8:31 am
I’ve used a Nalgene bottle for years. First a hard plastic one now a bike water bottle style one. I fill it with unfiltered tap water. I tried a Brita filter and I prefer the water unfiltered. Perhaps I’ve been lucky living in places with good tap water but if your regular tap water is no good that is the biggest problem. You should be raising a stink about that! I can’t possibly understand how people can drink cases and cases of bottled water, just refill a reusable bottle! You have a tap which brings water straight into your home yet you go out and lug home cases of water, or struggle with those giant bottles on the water coolers.
posted by Mike on 8-15-2007 at 8:32 am
To EV:
“When at home it’s strictly tap. We used to use a britta pitcher until I realized the only reason the britta water tasted better was that it was chilled. A pitcher of regular tap water left in the fridge tastes just as good where we’re at.”
I totally agree. I bought a Brita pitcher to try it out, but now I just use the pitcher without the filter to keep water cold in the fridge.
posted by Mike on 8-15-2007 at 8:34 am
At my house my mom (who can only drink filtered water) bought an actual water cooler. It’s really nice and convient; no standing around waiting for the water to become cold. There is always cold filtered water and when the water runs out you put the empty jugs on your front step on a scheduled date and they replace them for you.
When I’m out I buy bottled water because I drink a lot and run out really quickly. It would be nice to have a place to refill the bottles with cold filtered water.
Oh, and Molly, yay Omaha!
posted by Sally on 8-15-2007 at 9:04 am
The only time I can remember being glad I had a bottle of Aquafina instead of my Nalgene bottle was a couple of weekends ago when I went on the US Capitol building tour, where they’ve banned not only food and drinks, but also cans and bottles. I would not have liked to have to throw away my Nalgene, but I was not so attached to the old Aquafina bottle I’d been refilling from the tap.
posted by srah on 8-15-2007 at 10:02 am
I only wonder what people used to drink before Brita and Aquafina came to be… After all, how were they able to filter the clean water that comes from the tap? In the vast majority of places in the US, it is not necessary to filter your tap water; it’s one of the many benefits of living in a first world country that sadly are taken for granted.
I keep cups at each sink in my house and at my desk (there’s a drinking fountain down the hall). And a filled reusable rubbermaid bottle has been added to my bag just in case I end up some place that doesn’t have a sink or drinking fountain (which doesn’t happen very often).
posted by Becky on 8-15-2007 at 10:45 am
Water leaving the purification plant is more pure than most bottled waters out there and would not need additional filter. However, the infrastructure is aging in most cities (remeber our discussion on the bridge collapse in Minn.) Years of rust and other chemicals can leach into the water from the water main.
I live in a house that is less than 10 years old but it is in an old part of town. I use a fancy under-the-sink 5-stage filter. The filters start out lily white, but when I replace them a few months later they come out tinted brown; even though nothing is visible in the water. And I can taste the difference between the unfiltered and filtered water cold or at room temperature.
A note about fluoride: Nearly any filter that is designed to improve the taste of drinking water will remove most of the fluoride the the municipal water treatment adds to promote strong tooth enamel. Our dentist recommended fluoride pills to help the kiddies develop strong teeth while drinking filtered water.
posted by n2y2 on 8-15-2007 at 11:40 am
My husband and I bought a brita, but not a pitcher. We found a water cooler by brita, and it has a 3 gallon bottle. So instead of having to refill a pitcher, which takes up space in our already limited fridge, we already have filtered tap water, and it’s really inexpensive. Just 2 filters every 3 months. It also offers hot filtered water, which is great as we drink a lot of tea.
We do still buy bottled water. It’s convenient to take on the go, and we recycle the bottles. However, we do reuse them over and over with the filtered brita water, so a case from Costco will last us for about 3 months, if not longer.
Seemed like a good compromise. And if you had to drink our non-filtered water, you’d agree! Aging pipes make the water taste yucky.
posted by frogandpig on 8-15-2007 at 1:58 pm
why not just drink tapwater? is it not the exact same thing? if its not… is it really that different?
My boss and his office mate go though a 24 pack of bottled water a week. i take one bottle of theirs every two weeks and refill it daily. Even if everyone who drank bottled water refilled there bottle atleast once, thats about 19 billion less bottles… and not to mention a few extra bucks in your pocket.
posted by donnie on 8-15-2007 at 3:36 pm
I grew up on well water that was very heavy on the iron (whites would turn brown after a couple washes) that was only filtered to reduce the amount of iron - but it never removed it all. I loved that water, ice cold right out of the tap - I can drink most anything. I actually didn’t like city water for a along time because it always tasted like Clorine to me.
We put a whole house filter in at the house we are living in because even thou its on city water the pipes are really old. The filter plugs up after a month and is very brown - you can see large objects floating in the water when you change the filter. We decided to do the whole house filter instead of an under sink one to help add life to the water heater and washing machine - think of what accumulates in the bottom of the water heater and how you then use that hot water to wash and cook with…
At work we have water fountains but every drinks from the 5 gallon cooler - the plant was built at the turn of the century before alot of the EPA laws came into effect so we are pretty sure there is some nasty stuff either in the water table or in the pipes. Oh they do test the water regularly and find nothing but almost no one drinks out of the tap.
I will buy a case of water at Sam’s for the bottles. The big 1/2 gallon ones are great frozen as they stay cold longer especially on these hot summer days. I also like to use Gatorade bottles because of the wide mouth. I’m always refilling them from the tap at home or the pitcher in the fridge until they get pretty nasty or damaged. This lets me have the convience of taking a bottle with me when I walk out the door but I make sure I bring the bottles back home (I empty my car of them about once a week and then wash and re-fill them all at once). I like to make a bunch of bottles filled with Koolaide for when I get bored with water - keeps me from drinking soda.
Did any one read the article a while back that you shouldn’t reuse your water bottles because you can not get them as clean as they do when the water companys fill them. Thus you are at the risk for getting sick. And then there is the whole leaching of the plastic into the water and that it may cause cancer (big issue with baby bottles).
posted by Beth on 8-15-2007 at 9:17 pm
Am I the only one who remembers the Tuesday Turnip where we learned that city water goes through far more testing and is a lot purer than bottled water?
posted by Pointy-Hatted Geek on 8-16-2007 at 9:33 pm
I saw an article about something similar in my local paper, something about American restaurants discouraging the use of bottled water in attempts to ‘go green’. They had a picture of a massive pile of plastic bottles to accompany it (as you would) but upon closer examination I found that the labels on a majority of the bottles came from the companies Coca Cola and Pepsi.
I for one drink bottled water, but one bottle lasts me a couple of weeks because it’s easier for me to fill it up using my gym or works water filter (I don’t have one of my own), but it makes me think: if we encouraged people to drink bottled water rather than soda’s (assuming a magority of people would, like me, fill them up after they had finished with them) wouldn’t that benefit both the environment and the health of people in general?
I mean seriously, look around any crowd and you’ll see a whole heap of people who could do with more water and less soda.
I’m just sayin’…
posted by Marie on 8-17-2007 at 8:03 am