Decrease Stagnation; Glass water bottles rock!

My friend H. came across this awesome company this week and I thought I'd share it with everyone here! We all know that plastic bottled water is a terrible concept, both ethically and environmentally. Clean water should not be a commodity to be bought and sold, nor should our local water sources be controlled by huge corporations bent on sucking it up and selling it.

We know that the plastic leaches chemicals into the water and as a result into our bodies. No matter how much we recycle, each bottle is made from virgin plastic which means more petrochemicals. Recycling plastic also downgrades the plastic, making it less viable for reuse each cycle. For more information on plastic recycling, please visit Beth's Fake Plastic Fish.

What is an eco-yogi/ni to do? Obviously a reusable water bottle is the ticket. Since nalgene is plastic (and all plastic actually leaches BPA) stainless steel or aluminum it was. However, aluminum requires a coating, which SIGG has recently demonstrated could contain BPA or other chemicals. Klean Kanteen was our choice and we adore our stainless steel water bottles. (image from here)

However, stainless steel is quite energy intensive and not always great for the environment. All stainless steel bottles are manufactured in China which is not ideal, what with carbon from shipping and manufacturing. Although Klean Kanteen seems quite transparent on their website, I would prefer less mileage on my bottle... Also, just the process of mining steel is quite damaging to the environment, along with the actual manufacturing the steel into bottle shape (please read here for more details). Although the end result of amount of plastic bottles saved by using the stainless steel bottle a few hundred times balances the scales, I have wondered if there was a more gentle approach.

Enter glass. Glass is a fantastic product, easy to produce and extremely versatile in recycling with virtually no downgrading of the product. I've seen glass water bottles at Chapters, but they seem so fragile and thin... not exactly something I'd want to actually carry around. I am a hand talker and pretty darn clumsy... might be a messy situation.

Tap Water Bottles , on the other hand, look pretty fantastic! They appear to be made from thicker glass and have a more practical bottle shape. I also love the nifty, attached stopper which is perfect for a missed-placed type gal like myself. It would seem that they are made in Canada as their retailers are all in Toronto and they were created by a Canadian... but I'm not entirely sure as their website doesn't say. They would make a pretty snazzy holiday eco-gift though :) (image from here)

My favourite quote from their site:

"Tap water is constantly moving, staying fresh and never stagnating."

I do believe that if you're a periodic, or gentle water drinker (i.e. you like to bring water with you to work, the park or to the library) than a glass water bottle would be much less environmentally damaging than a stainless steel water bottle. I much prefer glass it requires much less energy and chemicals and hasn't scoured our Earth in mining. However, if you bring your water hiking, bicycling or are extremely clumsy and might drop the bottle... and you know you'd save hundreds of plastic bottles, a stainless steel might be best.

Thank you very much for the link H.!! :)

Happy Weekend and many Blessings!

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