Reducing Plastic Bottles!

So, first we reduce our reliance on plastic bags, now we need to start thinking about the other large plastic waste producer, plastic bottles. So hold on to your socks, here are the facts about plastic bottles according to Earth 911. Americans buy an estimated 28 billion bottles of water each year, over 80% of which end up in landfills. For each liter of water that you drink of bottled water, 3 liters were used in filling it up and 1/4 liter of oil was used to get it to your mouth. If you recycle one single bottle you will be saving enough energy to burn a 60 watt light bulb for 6 hours. In 2006 over 17 million barrels of oil was used to make plastic bottles, enough to fuel 100,000 cars for that year.

So, we all know that we should recycle bottles when we are done with them, but that's not really enough. Buying all those bottles in the first place is the real problem. Now, I again am not claiming you have to swear off bottled water, after all what do you do if you are out without your water and your kids start screaming that they are thirsty, or if you are at a festival and it gets hot?! The first step in reducing your dependence on these bottles of water, is to get some sort of water filter (our house has one under the sink) and refill the bottles that everyone has lying around in their car. Now, I know there was some email going around saying not to do this, but this Snopes report pretty well debunks that theory. However, it is important to note that if you taste plastic, it's probably not a good sign.

The next step is to get a more durable bottle that you can use to take your water around with you. Now, I'm not here to sell you a bunch of stuff, but I will occasionally post a product that is interesting. I do not necessarily endorse each of these products, but I want you to know that these products exist. This is one of those times. I highly suggest that if you can put aside some money to buy a SIGG bottle (Google it, I'm not going to link to a retailer). There are probably some generic versions of this bottle. You may ask, "why not just the durable plastic bottles I see everywhere?" The answer is that those are also good, but the point of reducing our dependence on plastic isn't helped by buying these bottles. When these bottles do eventually end up in the landfill at least the metal one will biodegrade as opposed to the plastic ones. Not to mention it's easier to find recyclers to take metal as well. While the SIGG bottles still contain some plastic components it's use is pretty limited.

Aside from the environmental reason to do this, there are some really good monetary reasons to take these steps. Simply, at 24-20 oz. bottles for $5 (this is what I saw most recently in an ad), and individuals should drink at least 3 of these a day, one person would be spending $228/yr. For a family of four that is almost $900/yr. So if you gawked at the price of a SIGG bottle you can now see how very cheap they really are. They pay for themselves in a few week's time. Anyways, isn't $900 a year helpful in taking your family on a nice little vacation? See, not only am I lazy, but I'm cheap, but "the lazy, cheap, environmental mom" was getting kind of wordy (or so my husbands says)!