Yesterday my friend casually mentioned to me in a lecture that my persistant re-using of a plastic bottle for drinking water would cause my gory death from evil plastic deseases, so I thought I'd better check it out. Thankyou for some useful information!

"Set aside one plastic container for the infrequent times when nothing but a lightweight unbreakable material will do..."

Fortunately, this is not the only option for those of us that want a lightweight unbreakable bottle all of the time...there are some really nice stainless steel bottles available out there that fill this niche nicely.  I recently purchased one made by Enviro Products, it holds 20.6 oz and the company makes 1L and 1.5L bottles as well.  I believe that it is actually lighter than my old Nalgene bottle.  AND THE WATER TASTES LIKE WATER, not plastic!!

My first-grader's teacher just sent home a letter asking that every family contribute a 24-pack of water bottles for the children's use in the classroom! Beside the amount of waste this will generate, I'm not pleased by the idea of my child ingesting water from plastic every day. I have just ordered my little girl a stainless steel drink bottle from Thermos (the new Foogo line isn't lined with plastic), as well as a stainless steel food jar for hot lunches and a plastics-free reusable lunch bag. Hopefully these will last a few good years. Klean Kanteen also carries stainless steel water bottles and sippy cups. My husband bikes to work every day, and he just uses glass food jars that used to carry canned fruit for his water bottle. As far as I know, he's never had breakage or leakage problems. We also store all of our leftovers in these glass jars that used to hold salsa or whatever instead of storing things in plastic wrap or plastic Tupperware-type containers. We've found that our food tastes way better and we don't have any use for those once-common plastics anymore. It's a great feeling.

I am looking for a glass bottle that can be filled at home and used at work on a daily basis. Approximately 1L is what I am looking for. Easy to open, drink from, seal and wash. I have looked extensively and not found anything yet. Suggestions welcome.

By the way if one wants the cleanest food or drinking container then glass is the best option.

Ceramics are made from clay and all sorts of things in clay may slowly diffuse out. Glazed ceramics can limit contamination from the clay. But then some glazed products are know to be toxic.

Metal containers also have problems. Many metal surfaces will oxidize which results in the metal entering the liquid or food as a metal cation. This is less of a problem with stainless steel. But it is still a problem. There are over 150 grades of stainless steel. In other words it gets complicated once you use something other than good quality clear* glass which is also cheap.

* no dyes, no painted surfaces, no nothing, just glass

Best,
Laurence

 So I have this one plastic bottle that I love for mixing my protein shakes.  On the bottom it has the little triangle, it's empty, but the letters PP are under it.  What's that about?

 If you're going "all glass", how do you buy things like yogurt and cottage cheese?  Are you removing them and placing them in glass?  Any ideas?

 What about plastic baggies?  Is it: "Plastic is plastic, bad, bad, bad" now, so go back to paper, waxed paper, foils?

Thanks for any advice!

Sigg makes great bottles for the outward bound. Small mouth is a love/hate relationship - great for drinking, poor for mixing. Give one a go and see what you think.

Cheers,
Miah

Plastics #2, #4, and #5 are pretty much pure hydrocarbons. Using them and then burning them is environmentally pretty much like burning an equivalent weight of gasoline. A gallon of gas, about eight pounds, would make a huge bale of fluffy plastic bags.

Letting these plastics float around in the environment is not especially dangerous from a chemical standpoint. They don't leach toxins. But from a physical point of view they do make an unholy mess, and guck up animals' bellies, and never biodegrade. So if you use them, you want to be sure to send them to the recyclers.

The dread #3 (polyvinyl chloride: toxic in manufacture, in use, and in landfills) and #7 (nonrecyclable miscellany including polycarbonate/Lexan/BPA) are a different story--chemically and physically a total noxious mess.

Hello,

In light of the lively and passionate discussion about the benefits and concerns around single use plastic water bottles versus stainless steel bottles, I want to get to the nitty gritty details of the issue.

Foremost, not one publication, discussion, comment or argument has included a complete life-cycle analysis of the two options.  Yes there are a few obvious arguments in favor of stainless steel bottles, but without knowing the total inputs through a single bottles life-cycle we can't make a completely conclusive and compelling argument for the switch.  

With the current discussion I could - while playing the devils advocate - argue that since stainless steel bottles are bigger and use more materials they likely use more energy and materials than plastic bottles.  So the most appropriate action for communities to take is to improve recycling frequency of plastic bottles rather than banning them all together.

So what I want to find out is: what is the complete life-cycle of a stainless steel water bottle.  More specifically, how much water, minerals and energy are necessary for creating one stainless steel water bottle. That should include everything used for mining, manufacturing and shipping.

Thank you for taking the time to consider my request.

All the best