Why I Don't Pay for (Bottled) Water Anymore

You know, it's funny, I keep forgetting and bringing my (BPA free) Nalgene bottle filled with water to the security checkpoint. And then end up having to guzzle it. I try to bring sippy cups for the toddler and empty bottles for the rest of us (one for each) and then get fountain drinks from an airport vendor -- you know, a huge iced coffee for mom, a juice if they've got it for the kiddoes, or water (usually they have a water thingy right next to the soda at most food places). But I am with you -- I don't drink the water on airplanes - they warn you about even washing your hands in that stuff - so I definitely will go bottled if I have to. Not a perfect system. 

SurelyYouNest.com

I do the Kleen Kanteen too. I fill up everyone's at home and we take them on the road all the time...everytime we go anywhere. Problem is, when we do air travel, we can't bring those lovely steel containers on a plane. How do you avoid buying them at the airport? Do you just drink out of the airport water fountains and wait to get water on the plane? I guess that would work, but I don't trust water fountains not to be havens for nasty bacteria from everyone and ther dog drinking from them...especially in an airport.
Our last trip, we ended up buying some bottled water in the airport because we had a 3 hour layover. Then, we saved those bottles and re-filled them at our destination and brought those back with us on our way home.

GreenMoms, Melinda

www.GreenMomsCoastside.com ( http://www.greenmomscoastside.com/ )

Green On! Your Children Will Thank You For It.

Diane MacEachern www.biggreenpurse.com ( http://www.biggreenpurse.com ) Diane@biggreenpurse.com

I hate the thought of wasting two gallons of perfectly good water for every one gallon bottled (yep - that's right). The conservationist in me thinks it's just stupid to throw away something that should never have been made in the first place. And I hate to see plastic bottles washing up in places they don't belong! I just returned from a trip to the Amazon basin in Bolivia and the Sacred Valley in Peru. The only thing floating on the Amazon besides dead logs and an occasional cayman?  You guessed it: discarded plastic water bottles. And what's the last thing you'd want to find on the banks of the Rio Urubamba, the "sacred" river that leads to Machu Picchu? Right again: mounds of plastic bottles that wash into the river during every rainy season. Of course, when the only clean water in a country is bottled water, what are people supposed to do? There's no excuse here in the U.S. But developing countries are in a real bind. Peruvians told me that none of their water is safe to drink. If they don't buy bottled water, they have to boil their tap water to protect against cholera. Building water treatment facilities to purify drinking water would be a great way to protect public health as well as the environment. But that would cost the government money, wouldn't it? As it is, Peruvians (and others in developing countries) bear the burden of finding clean drinking water - then they, like the rest of us, bear the burden of cleaning up the mess that bottled water creates.

To invest in a super cute, uber-eco looking Kleen Kanteen!  I bought the cutest pink one cuz a girl's still gotta have style.

Michelle 

www.greenbeandreams.blogspot.com ( http://www.greenbeandreams.blogspot.com )

I hear the laments of folks who live in areas that don't have such great tap water.  They may need to purchase a water filter to give up the bottle. 

For those who choose Brita, be sure and sign the petition to urge Clorox, maker of Brita in North America, to create a take-back recycling program for its filters, as is already being done in Europe!

Visit the Take Back The Filter campaign:  http://www.takebackthefilter.org ( http://www.takebackthefilter.org/ ) to sign the petition and send us your used filters!

BTW, get your water tested first.  You may not need any filter.  In our house, we drink straight from the tap, with the occasional spritz from the Soda Club CO2 cannister.

Beth Terry http://www.fakeplasticfish.com

@ Denise  Check out a soda maker from Soda Club ( http://www.sodaclubusa.com ).  No, I don't work for the company or get paid by them, but they did send me a free soda maker to review on my blog, and I love it!  Fill up a reusable bottle or caraffe with tap water, put into the soda maker, push the lever a few times, and voila!  Fizzy water!  The CO2 canisters are returned to the company to be refilled.  Zero packaging waste and zero shipping of water.  Once you pay for the machine, you only pay to replace the CO2.

Beth Terry http://www.fakeplasticfish.com

We don't have the luxury of trusting our local water source. I am sure that it is clean when it leaves the  purification plant, but the infrastructure is too suspect to trust it by the time it gets to us. So we do rely on the "water cooler" in our house. I bought a water distiller a few months ago, but unfortunately the bottles that it distills into have  the lucky #7 on the bottom so I am now a bit leery of using that. Does anyone know if only drinking distilled water is okay? There is a whole slew of "muck" at the bottom of the distiller after it is finished distilling. (I have been distilling the tap water).

I like the Grolsch Beer Bottle idea... maybe I can distill directly into Grolsch bottles!

(after I empty them of course:)

I'm guessing that at 56 that I'm the oldest member of this commenting crowd, as such I don't think much about giving up the bottle. I never started the habit. When it first came into Michigan during the 80s, it just smacked against my small town sensibilities. 

What I do now is refill my Grolsch beer bottle with tap water and drink that. I don't worry about the water. My bad, I suppose, but at some point I have to trust that someone is doing their job.

The Grolsch bottle is really heavy and holds the chill factor for a long time. To be honest, I bought it for the little recapable stopper top. (well, ok, I like the beer too) I sing the "Another $1.39 Saved" song when I refill them. That's how much I save on each at a minimum and when I pop off the ceramic topper later on, it POPS just like it was sealed in a factory. I have all the premium bottled fresh water experience with none of the cost.

Just got this in my reader now - http://www.ewg.org/node/27027

It's a great summary of current health concerns with tapwater (pharma, disinfectants etc) and a candid look at some of the reasons that pregnant/nursing women and those with small kids/compromised immune systems are worried about safety of tap water.

SurelyYouNest.com

Hey Denise,

I am a longtime lover of the fizzy water myself! But it's regulated even differently than regular bottled water - odd, huh? I quit outright awhile back because of the bizarre loopholes NRDC talks about: 

FDA's rules exempt
many forms of what most of us would consider bottled water from its
definition of "bottled water," and therefore, according to FDA, exempts
them from all of FDA's specific standards for bottled water testing and
contamination. If the product is declared on the bottle ingredient
label simply as "water," or as "carbonated water," "disinfected water,"
"filtered water," "seltzer water," "soda water," "sparkling water," or
"tonic water," it is not considered "bottled water" by FDA. [121] ( http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/chap4.asp#no... ) FDA says it exempted these waters because they are "not understood by the public to be bottled water." [122] ( http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/chap4.asp#no... ) 

 http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/chap4.asp

I love the bubbly myself - there are a couple options to make it yourself: an iSi standalone carbonator (expensive chargers plus not so bubbly) or a SodaClub system. I'm longingly eyeing the one with glass carafes (Penguin) but it's pretty pricey itself.

MamaBird

SurelyYouNest.com

But not in every day life.

Sure, keep a couple litres of bottled water in your "safe" place in the event of hurricanes, tornadoes, or earthquakes. Or have some bottled water on your next trip to Mexico, China, India, or Africa. But in Europe or Canada or the United States? There's really no call for it on an every day occasion.

Instead, I drink tap water at home. You can buy a filter, but honestly, I don't.

And when I'm out and about, I fill my little Klean Kanteen with water and I'm ready to go. No more paying exorbitant prices for water bottles at airports (did you notice how they all conveniently have water fountains) plus that Klean Kanteen is cuuuuuuuute!

Ruchi

http://arduousblog.blogspot.com/

1) I don't need it!

2) I can bring my own tap water in a reusable bottle or drink tap water wherever I go. 

3) I don't trust the water quality.

4) It is a waste of resources (water, petroleum for the bottle and transport energy)

5) And, I really don't need it -- I can hydrate before I go out and if I will really need water "on the go" I can bring my own!

We go to a weekly playdate where the mom always serves up bottled water. I always politely decline and then ask for a glass of water. I so want to ask her what is up with the bottled water as our city has excellent water quality -- probably better than the water in the bottles she buys from Wal-mart! Unfortunately, I am so passionate about this, I am afraid to speak up, because I'll likely come off too judgemental. 

I only drink out of plastic water bottles if there are NO OTHER OPTIONS - and even then I search high and low for other options.  Why?  Because even though bottled water has to meet the same standards as tap water, it is overseen by the FDA and tap water is overseen by the EPA.  EPA tests tap water frequently - the FDA doesn't really ever test bottled water.  And, although as  you point out the NRDC hasn't found significant problems with bottled water, why the heck should I pay for it when I get it out of my tap?

 Second, and more important, ever piece of plastic ever made, with the very limited exception of the small percentage that has been incinerated, is still around somewhere in our environment - much of it floating in the great pacific plastic garbage patch  in the Pacific Ocean.  Now twice the size of the continental United States.  In some areas, there is 1 piece of plankton for every 48 pieces of plastic.  Why would I want to contribute to that?

Jennifer, www.thesmartmama.com ( http://www.thesmartmama.com )

but we've somehow become a family of "canned fizzy water" drinkers. I don't know exactly how that happened, but it has.

~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager

Flamingo House Happenings ( http://www.flamingohouse.net/ )