Daily Tip: Water Bottles and Tap Water
I coach a high school sports team and noticed the other day how quickly our facility gets trashed with empty Zephyr Hills and Aquafina bottles after just a couple of practices. We’re one of the better teams at our club because we actually have a bin for recyclables (unlike some of the other teams that toss everything), but this reminded me of a perfect tip that needed to be hammered home. Actually, this is two tips for the price of one.
Tip One: Use a water bottle! You can buy a fancy Nalgene water bottle for about $8, or a regular water bottle for less at any sports or bike store in the country. Nalgene-style bottles hold 32 ounces of water, which works better for athletes in training who generally need at least a liter of water while working out. Take your water bottle to work, hydrate, take it to the gym, hydrate, use at home in the evening and hydrate. This cuts down drastically on disposable water bottle waste and also cuts down on having to wash drinking glasses at home, which saves energy and water. Save the fancy drinking glasses for when you have guests over.
Tip Two: Drink tap water instead of bottled water! This one alone would save millions of tons of waste per year, not to mention save you money at the store. Tap water is heavily tested and regulated by the EPA and is perfectly safe in over 90% of the country. Also, did you know that water bottling uses 1.5 million plus barrels of oil per year from start to finish and costs between $1 to $4 per gallon? Seriously?? Let’s eliminate that.
Personally, I drink tap water from my home in Orlando, Florida, and I think it’s quite tasty. I’ve also started insisting that my athletes bring cheap sports bottles to practice that can be refilled and washed instead of buying bottled water.
See this page from the EPA about tap water. Also consider browsing the Think Outside The Bottle site for more information.
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Comments
Julia, great call! Sigg makes a line of cool aluminum water bottles for between $20 - $30. This is affordable for me and you, but the price would deter some of my kids from purchasing them. My goal is to get every kid on my team (50+) completely off of bottled water and using washable sports bottles…likely, we’ll get cheap sports bottles in bulk for a buck or two each.
Ben O’Gradys last blog post..Daily Tip: Water Bottles and Tap Water
Klean Kanteen makes a great version with a wide mouth that accomodates ice! It’s cheaper than a Sigg and dishwasher safe. Want a great fundraiser for your team? Contact me - julia@H2Ox2.com. My kids are swimmers and it kills me to see the trash after every practice. The meets are a nightmare. We recycle in Michigan so they collect the returnable pop cans and bottles but the garbage is overflowing with water bottles.
[...] doing it. Simple but powerful. Summer’s take was that talking about small changes (like ditching bottled water) doesn’t inspire and doesn’t move the needle enough. Her talk focused on getting [...]
Better yet, reduce plastic waste even more with a metal water bottle! They’re tough, dishwasher safe, non-leaching, and completely recyclable.
Hard plastic bottles have not gotten the green light from a recent study by our government. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reports that there is “some concern” over BPA and more research needs to be done.