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We are a family of water drinkers. My husband fills up several water bottles when he goes to school or out to teach music lessons and I always have water nearby me at home. When we go on errands, we almost always bring along a water bottle for each of us. We like our water.
And, of course, we try to use plastic free water bottles. It’s nice to know that we aren’t adding to the 60 million water bottles thrown away everyday. If that wasn’t reason enough of a reason to stop buying plastic water bottles, here are five reasons you should fill your own water bottles at home.
1-You can easily avoid leaching chemicals from plastic by using non plastic water bottles. This includes chemicals such as BPA and other chemicals such as phthalates (such as unregulated DEHP)
2-You won’t add more plastics to our landfill or use precious energy to recycle them. Refilling your own water bottles at home is a simple way to protect our resources.
3-You can save money. Even when buying a very expensive water filtering system, you can save money in the end by filling your own water bottles, if you drink bottled water everyday.
4-You will be reducing your use of fossil fuels and ironically, water, by filling your own water bottles. The production of the plastic for water bottles actually uses more water then it takes to fill the water bottles!
5-Bottled water can have similar quality or even be of worse quality than tap water. So you may not even be getting a better quality water when you buy bottled water!
I think it just makes plain common sense to fill your own instead of buying plastic water bottles. In the end, why not? To replace the plastic water bottle, we need clean water and a good water bottle.
Water filters
As pointed out, tap water may not be all the much worse, if at all, from most bottled waters. So even filling your water bottle from your tap, may give you the same quality water you were buying. You may find some helpful information about the water quality of your state here.
You can buy a home water filtering system (some are very inexpensive, some very), or you can fill up gallon sized (glass) jars with purified water at many health food stores for very little cost. I hear that in some areas there are very good water delivery companies who will also bring you water in large containers of very high quality, spring water. That’s also an option for some.
But what about the Water Bottle?
We have many different water bottles and have almost completely eliminated plastic. We use everything from saved glass kombucha bottles (which work great), to Kleen Kanteen, to the odd stainless steel water bottle that a food company sent me. I personally favor glass water bottles. I think that water from a glass container tastes best (and you don’t have to worry about putting, say, lemonade, in it, as you would with many metal containers). Old kombucha bottles have done their duty well, as has a clunky mason jar-though apparently people drink “moonshine” out of mason jars, so this looks suspicious to many!
This was one reason I was very happy to find Life Factory Water bottles as another-more classy looking- glass option. In fact, one of my readers already mentioned that she loves this brand. My husband liked them so much, he bought one for himself to take to school. And Life Factory kindly sent us the smaller size for Elena to try out. She loves it! (It doesn’t hurt that it matches her Daddy’s). We like that it has the silicone sleeve on it as it makes it not only easier to hold but also protects it if dropped. I wouldn’t recommend trying this out, but I accidentally dropped Elena’s on our very hard tile floor and it didn’t break (thank goodness). If you use bottles for your baby, their small size also works as a baby bottle when fitted with a nipple. All to say, this is our new favorite water bottle.
But regardless of what brand of water bottle you use, the concept is quite simple. Buy a durable water bottle….or two or three and fill it with water at home and bring it along with you. It’s one big way you can drink life supporting water without exposing yourself to chemicals from your water bottle or damaging our environment.
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Ach. It’s the one thing I just can’t get away from. I’ll buy BPA free water, and reuse the bottle for a couple of months. And I have every single glass bottle and metal bottle there is, but for some reason I just don’t like to drink out of them. No idea why. It’s very frustrating :).
I had to laugh at your moonshine comment…I usually carry around a Mason jar of water with me while teaching school all day. Sometimes my students think I’m drinking a science experiment.
My husband is a teacher and we use stainless steel water bottles… every year some of his students make cracks about how he could be drinking “anything” in those bottles and no one would know. One of these days it will be totally normal and people won’t be suspicious. In the meantime, it’s just one more slightly weird thing we do 🙂
I live in the South where moonshine is still drunk from mason jars. I take my mason jar of water into church and get raised eyebrows every week. Every so often, someone will ask and I’ll say, “Yeah, my rockgut burns a hole right through them plastic bottles” in my best drawl.” I wink, of course, then give them an advantage or two to using glass over plastic.
Another good reason for not using plastic bottles is the amount of margin you are paying to the brand. They may sell at a dollar a gallon but the water costs them less than 2 cents per gallon. I dislike the taste of chlorine very much and so drink bottled water and will continue to do so until there is a simple safe appliance type water purifier that does not need replaceables.
I researched mineral water for Bhutan (excellent) and was amazed at the variable quality of bottled purified and even mineral waters. There are so many hypes and scams out there. People should be careful that whatever they chose they are getting value for money. Some of the most expensive bottled water is just a marketing ploy.
I have a topic for you to discuss in the future – types of water filters to purchase. I was told my a nutritionist to purchase a 10 stage water filter. I went to Amazon and bought one – not too expensive but more than a regular filter.
Truthfully, I know know if all this 10 stage filter is a gimmick or not. So if you could discuss water systems, I’d be most grateful.
Thanks for the great work and hope you and Aria are feeling better.
The water quality reports show the safety of the water but not its quality. For instance, my tap water tastes HORRIBLE because it’s full of chlorine. Completely safe from microorganisms, but I don’t drink it.
I buy 5 gallon plastic bottles of spring water (from an actual spring, and yes I know where it’s located) and drink that instead. Not sure if I’m still getting BPA in my water or not. Probably.
We do, however, use the stainless bottles for the kids’ school and when we go hiking and whatnot.
Will stick to stainless steel bottles with BPA free lids – glass water bottles cost about $50 here in Australia for a 650ml. Whatever the benefits, that’s not justifiable to me.
That is expensive! You can always use an glass bottle from something like a juice bottle. But stainless steel is great too. 🙂
I use a Brita Pitcher to filter my water into glass bottles that originally came with juice. But now I am wondering about the Brita Pitcher itself: it is made out of plastic!
I LOVE my Kleen Kanteen 🙂
My husband had a Kleen Kanteen before this water bottle and also liked it. 🙂
I’m looking to phase out plastic bottles. I have a water filter at home and am slowly replacing the refilled plastic bottles I keep in the fridge with glass. I bought one caraffe, but I find my adult daughter will reach for the plastic bottle and not the caraffe. Then I got an nice looking small glass bottle of water at a restaurant and brought that home and saw she used that instead of the plastic bottle she usually reaches for. My next plan is to refill empty vodka or wine bottles with water. Looks cooler. 🙂
For when we are out of the house, I wanted to buy an alternative to plastic. They sell the metal containers everywhere in my country, but I wonder if it makes the water taste metallic. Could someone who has tried it advise me?
Ooh I like the looks of that Life Factory bottle. I’ve been using a Sigg bottle…since their recall and new adhesive (or whatever it was) I haven’t heard any pros or cons about them. Thoughts?
Michelle,
I haven’t used the Sigg bottles since I learned that they had a coating inside most of the bottles (I know it’s not supposed to leach, but I have been wary still). I figure if I am going to spend the money on a nice water bottle, might as well buy one that isn’t questionable. 😉 But I hadn’t heard about the recall! What was that about?
Someone (sorry, I’m not on my own computer, where the link is saved) is making silicone sleeves & sippy cup lids for jelly-size (8 oz) mason jars for kids. I am planning to order some once we finally get a house & get settled. Where I’m from, yeah, moonshine sometimes comes in mason jars, but lots of people use them to drink from as a matter of course, too. You can even find ones with handles that are meant to be mugs. Those are our favorite glasses for at home.
Well I’ve now placed an order from them. A tad pricey, but I hope they work well. I want to get rid of plastic water bottles – one of my worse bad habits.
Now they need to make water pitchers with the plastic protector for the home (hint, hint!!!). I want to have water available in the bedrooms but don’t want the plastic or metal pitchers and just glass is way too risky. My husband would surely break it in less than a week 🙂
That’s a great idea! I hope they do it, because I would want one.
Another advantage of glass water bottles is that you can pour hot water in them, put an old sock over it, and it becomes a bedwarmer for chilly nights. And then you also have water easily available if you get thirsty but don’t wnat to get out of bed. 🙂 You can do this with plastic too, of course, but the heat causes a lot more leaching and makes the water taste like plastic. As for the lid, I’ve found that removing the insert eliminates the taste issues that can still arise with glass bottles.
The US doesn’t even recycle plastic water bottles beccause it ‘costs too much.’ Instead, we send all our junk to third-world countries with some money.
The US doesn’t even recycle plastic water bottles beccause it ‘costs too much.’ Instead, we send all our junk to third-world countries with some money.
I would suggest to use glass bottles instead of plastic because they are Recyclable, have Zero Permeability, and most importantly preserves natural flavor.