Welcome to "What Not to PURGE (WNTP)," a new segment of this blog.
My quest to PURGE is not just to get rid of junk in my house, its also to reduce my carbon footprint by living more simply. I've been trying to get better about buying items used or getting them from Freecycle because it crazy how much energy is needed to make a new product and how many harmful byproducts come from production. If you've seen "The Story of Stuff," you know a bit about this.
In light of the Clean Water Garage Sale, I wanted to put another challenge out to my vast (yeah right) readership. Watch "The Story of Bottled Water."
In my family, we switched to stainless steel water bottles. Everyone in my family has their own, actually, Bean and Monkey each have two: one they keep in their bed/in the house and one they take out with them. We take these everywhere we go so we always have access to water from our own faucet or a water fountain somewhere.
In my opinion, stainless steel is the way to go. Plastic sippy cups and water bottles that you can buy are harmful for your own body when you drink from them, they release nastiness when they are produced, and then you are done with them they end up in the trash, or if you recycle them, more nastiness is released into the earth.
Stainless steel is more indestructible, lasting for years before needing to be replaced, if ever. It is inert and non-reactive to what you are drinking (as opposed to some aluminum water bottles you may have seen around). Also when you finally do toss it (I dunno why you would) the metal is easily recoverable, reducing the amount of emissions when recycling it.
If you can't find yourself a stainless steel water bottle used (like I found one at the Clean Water Garage Sale for our baby girl), this is one item totally worth buying brand new. In the long run, it will pay for itself and the impact on our Earth from producing it will be far less than the alternatives of buying bottled water, or using another type of drinking canister.
In sum, those recyclable bottles from bottled water are #1 on WNTP, because you should try not to buy them in the first place. I know, it's a challenge. I never said PURGE was going to be easy but, are you up for it?
I totally agree! :) I try as hard as I possibly can to NEVER drink bottled water from plastic bottles. It's a waste of money and terrible for the environment (creates waste AND uses oil to make the plastic bottle). Besides, some of the reusable bottles are so much prettier and don't make the water taste like plastic.
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