A reminder of why we should still drink tap water

Bringing it all together

This post will be bringing together new information with some snippets from past entries to reinforce why we choose to drink tap water. Some reports in the media have come out in the past couple weeks that may urge us back to the bottle. We stay strong and healthy by choosing tap, and here’s why.

Controversy about tap water

On September 13, just last week, the New York Times published “Clean Water Laws Neglected, at a Cost,” exposing the United States’ noncompliance with the Clean Water Act. This act, enacted in 1972, establishes regulations for states and companies to follow when affecting, through pollution, the chemical, physical, and biological

makeup of bodies of water surrounding them. The Times article reveals that regulators have ignored companies’ extreme violations of the Clean Water Act, therefore increasing the amount of dangerous pollutants in communities’ drinking water. Renegade journalist Charles Duhigg outlines how individuals’ exposure to illegal concentrations of many of these materials, including lead, nickel, copper, zinc, chlorine, and selenium, may contribute to higher occurrences of cancer, mental retardation, skin rashes, tooth decay, and stomach ulcers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/us/13water.html?_r=1&hp

http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/lcwa.html

EPA’s action for clean water

Lisa Jackson, the new administrator of the EPA and subject whom I often admire in this forum, has already addressed the issue of water safety. Since President Obama appointed Jackson to her position within the EPA, the regulating body for the Clean Water Act, Jackson has requested supplemental appropriations to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. For the fund, Jackson has requested $2.4 billion from Congress’s appropriations for the 2010 fiscal year; this is $1.7 billion more than what the fund received in 2009. With these appropriations, Jackson claims the EPA will be enabled to direct cost-effective and environmentally positive efforts to repair and better manage clean water facilities in U.S. communities.

http://www.epa.gov/ocir/hearings/testimony/111_2009_2010/2009_0616_lpj.pdf

Studies have often, often found that tap water is no worse than bottled water

In 2005, ABC’s 20/20 recruited microbiologists to compare the materials, including bacteria, within tap water to those materials within bottled water. Finding no difference between New York City tap water and bottled water, these scientists recommended that individuals consume tap water, which can cost up to 500 times less money than bottled water.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Health/Story?id=728070&page=1

Drinking tap water saves our environment, after all

As I’ve more recently posted, between 2005 and 2008, Americans increased their plastic water bottle consumption by 59 percent and pumped $5.9 billion into the bottled water industry. Of American consumers, up to 70 percent claim to drink bottled water. Beverage Marketing Corp. reports that these consumers drank 8.7 billion gallons of bottled water in 2008 and 8.8 billion in 2007. These figures respectively amount to 29 and 28.5 gallons per capita. Huge.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081203074.html

This rate of bottled water consumption is harmful to the globe and our dwindling natural resources. Food & Water Watch also reports that bottled water manufacturers and distributors use over 17 million barrels of oil to produce the bottled water that Americans consume in one year. This amount of oil, which would be enough to fuel one million cars per year, is further wasted by consumers’ refusal to recycle these plastic bottles. Food & Water Watch claim that consumers throw about 86 percent of these bottles into the trash and, subsequently, into landfills.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081203074.html

Pat Franklin, of the Container Recycling Institute, reports that Americans dispose over 60 million plastic bottles into U.S. landfills and incinerators each year. With over 3 thousand functioning landfills and over 10,000 municipal, stagnant landfills existing in the United States, Franklin expresses concern about these landfills’ pollutant-emissions and toxin-leaching into the earth and groundwater.  Landfill liners, he explains, only have the thickness of 1/10 in., which allows for the eventual leaching of the toxin leachate into the ground. Landfill liners, unsustainable after decades of chemical components decaying them and leaching into our earth and air, present a threat to public health and safety.

Health risks of plastics, the real tap alternative

Bottled water consumers’ health risks also occur during the act of drinking water. Franklin mentions that the United States EPA sets more water quality standards for tap water than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) poses for bottled water. Since Franklin’s report, researchers have pinpointed and examined the toxin Bisphenol A (BPA), which appears in most plastic water bottles, leaches into water, and can cause severe health problems for consumers.

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/what-plastics-do-to-your-body.html

 http://www.container-recycling.org/media/newsarticles/plastic/2006/5-WMW-DownDrain.ht

BPA polycarbonate is used to make common plastic items, including Nalgene™ bottles, dishes, liners of metal cans, baby bottles, and bottled water plastic. The compound BPA is a lab-derived form of estrogen, used commonly to affect the hardness and durability of products it appears in BPA easily leaches into contained water, especially if the plastic container has been refilled, heated, or frozen. Researchers, like Claude Hughes and Frederick S. vom Saal of the University of Missouri-Columbia, have found that by providing unnatural amounts of estrogen to those drinking contaminated water, BPA can be linked to irregular puberty, obesity, infertility, and cancer in both males and females. In lab experiments, these researchers have found that BPA can cause animals’ early puberty and production of pre-cancerous cells. By constantly drinking from bottled water, consumers ingest harmful amounts of the BPA toxin.

http://www.ehponline.org/members/2005/7713/7713.html

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/what-plastics-do-to-your-body.html

Plastics fester bacteria, remember?

I have already written a full entry about this. Consumers also risk ingesting greater amounts of bacteria by drinking from plastic bottles, especially if these individuals refill and reuse their bottles. An Oregon laboratory tested used plastic water bottles for bacteria colony counts and discovered large rates of bacteria growth, even in bottles that had been scrubbed with soap. A bottle they washed the day before the test grew an average of 2,400 colonies, and one bottle they tested grew over 4,100 bacteria colonies on its surface. The researchers repeatedly found that the plastic surface allowed faster growth of bacteria than other surfaces, such as glass.

http://blog.sierratradingpost.com/in-outdoors-camping-gear-forest-trails/reused-plastic-water-bottles-loaded-with-bacteria/

And by national and state EPA standards, tap water contains fluorine to kill bacteria, and throughout the past decade researchers have periodically found greater amounts of fluorine in tap water than in bottled water. By drinking fluorine-filled tap water from a glass, consumers avoid the risk of ingesting the bacteria that can easily fester inside opened plastic water bottles.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/03/000322090356.htm

Tap water wastes money

American consumers are now reportedly spending less money to buy bottled water, which can be attributed, yes, to the nationwide recession. Nestle, the leading corporation for bottled water sales, has experienced a drop in sales this year for the first time in six years. In the beginning of 2009, profits dropped 2.9 percent across all Nestle bottled water brands: Poland Spring, Deer Park, S. Pellegrino and Perrier. These consumers presumably choose to drink tap water instead. Good call.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081203074.html

Reporter Maura Judkis credits anti-plastic bottle campaigns for this turn in consumption. She sites the campaigns

“Take Back the Tap” and “TapIt” that motivate Americans to avoid bottled water and to be more ecologically conscious. These campaigns encourage consumers to invest in BPA-free metal water bottles and water filters for tap water. H₂Ox2, the online company I’ve often sited, provides a forum for bloggers to share research about plastics while selling alternative water container and filtering products. The site sells individual bottle filters for $8.70 and even larger water-capacity filters for $118. American consumers are creating a demand for tap water products, which they are willing to invest in to save money, save their health, or save the environment.

www.h2ox2.com/store/

People are getting informed and bringing it all back to common sense. Buy a filter for your tap water if you’re afraid that your tap water hasn’t be adequately purified. I believe these horrible stories about communities with inadequate regulators. This is why we need to lobby Congress to be pumping money into the EPA for programs like the Clean Water funds and Superfund. And we already see the EPA taking action on existing cases of unpurified tap water sources. The consequences of consuming non-tap water are overwhelming and worth the investment of buying a filter or addressing policy makers for more strict tap water regulations. Drink tap. Tap it. Tap that. Whatever. Tap water is key here. 

Drinking tap water to save dollars

Recession affecting water bottle sales

The greatest motivation for consumers to turn toward or away from products these days is affordability. 

Somehow, not striking enough in past years was the idea that investing in one $20-$30 metal water bottle and one tap water purifier for $20 would save families a ton of money. This move would be sensible. Families buying $20 cases of bottled water each week spend over $1,000 every year on water; individuals even occasionally buying water bottles, perhaps, $5-$10 worth each week, spend about $300-$550 each year.

One $40 investment could have gone a long way.

Yet in her Fresh Greens blog, Maura Judkis discusses consumers’ move during the recession to finally buy fewer water bottles, whether or not these will be reused or replaced by metal alternatives.

The country's largest seller of bottled water, Nestle, has reported a decline of almost 3 percent in its bottled water division (which includes Pellegrino, Poland Spring and Perrier and Deer Park) for the first half of the year.

A revolution, triggered by economic downturn and eventual recovery. Have weot heard this story before? Yes, this is what happens during recessions. We vote in new presidential administrations and stop buying products that pollute our Earth, harm our bodies, are pretty monetarily costly.

…Analysts also credit the decline to environmentalists' campaigns, such as Take Back the Tap and TapIt, to encourage consumers to avoid bottled water. Their encouragement has also led cities from Takoma Park, Md. to San Francisco to cut bottled water out of their budgets, to the tune of up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just this week, the Guardian called out the BBC for spending more than $600,000 per year on bottled water.

…. On water. Money simply spent on bottled water.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/fresh-greens/2009/08/13/bottled-water-demand-beginning-to-empty-out.html

On Wednesday (Nestle) reported that profits for the first half of the year dropped 2.7 percent, its first decline in six years.

What not to do

"It's an obvious way to cut back," said Joan Holleran, director of research for market research firm Mintel. "People might still be buying bottled water, but you can bet that they're refilling those bottles."

Obviously people are forgetting and ignoring the health costs of drinking from refilled plastic water bottles. Refer to my earlier posts, especially from April 21, about the dangers of not only drinking from plastics once, but multiple times.

Basically, Think erosion of toxic materials into your body. Each time you leave your water in heated areas, like hot cars, BPA leaches into your water at higher rates. Each time you refill your plastic water bottle, more chemicals like BPA are depleting into the water you drink.

How much we've been spending on bottled water

Sales of bottled water swelled 59 percent to $5.1 billion between 2003 to 2008, making it one of the fastest growing beverages. About 70 percent of consumers say they drink bottled water.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081203074.html

Who to blame for this costly trend: the profiting companies, of course

Florida's got a personal interest in the bottled water trend. Like it or not, the state's springs are a major supplier of water to the industry.

… Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi recently cited the shift to tap water "in this downturn" by some of its "casual" beverage drinkers. Pepsi's Aquafina is the country's biggest bottled water brand.

In a tough economy, Pepsi Bottling North America president Robert King recently told analysts, "one of the first things that a shopper can decide to do is consume tap water as opposed to purchasing bottled water."

Bitterness ensued. 

Nestle Waters North America is a major user of Florida's aquifer to bottle water under the Zephyrhills brand. Nestle also sells Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Ice Mountain, Ozarka and Poland Spring among its domestic brands.

A near-monopoly of the most popular water drinks in the country. I’ve yet to find one thing I like about the plastic water bottle industry.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/bottled-water-industry-sales-decrease-during-recession/1028389

A side note: Bling H2O

The website is below, and I’m appalled. Glass bottles of water, blinged out with Swarovski crystals, costing upwards of $500. I don’t know which I can handle less: a female’s nearly naked legs and butt conveniently cushioning a bottle on the main page, or the fact that this is actually a popular product that celebrities buy, or the companies' frequent advertising on the Fox News Channel.

http://www.blingh2o.com/store/index.php

I’d also like to give immense credit to the Washington Post article posted above. Throughout my search for this post, I found nearly verbatim citations of the article by journalists and bloggers across the country. Thanks for supplying our information, Washington Post. 

Birth control packaging: Plastic waste that we can all learn from

An astonishing amount of women takes the pill

The “pill” I refer to is any oral contraceptive medication that alters female users’ hormones and fertility. I’m proud to take it, and my female friends proudly take it, either for birth control, PMDD, or other hormonal concerns. The birth control pill is, relatively, a great thing. An estimated 100 million women around the world take the pill (http://www.contraceptivetechnology.com/table.html), which is astounding considering the other forms of contraception a female can use in her sex life: male condoms, female condoms, diaphragms, contraceptive sponges, spermicide… all this madness.

 Currently mainstream women most so prefer the pill, and a typical conversation in the college dorm room is the comparison of which brands female friends are using (I encourage male friends and male partners into these talks too, as there is absolutely no need for males’ uninvolvement in the pill talks) And quite often, girls compare the hilarious packaging of their pills. The topic of this post: excessive birth control packaging.

 But, first, I’ll address the inquiry that inspired this post: Is the particularly soft plastic of birth control packaging giving me large doses of BPA?

(Refer to my post from Feb. 12 for an explanation of the BPA toxin) Well, I’ve done some sporadic online investigating over these months and have found, really, little information on this issue. It’s an important matter for scientists to investigate: with the pill already hyping females’ hormones, the addition of BPA, a synthetic form of estrogen, might significantly alter the intended effects of the pill. Maybe your girlfriend’s appetite was heightened not from the pill, but from the BPA’s bad interaction with the pill. Maybe we could have avoided our exponentially worse menstruation cramps while taking the pill, ladies. Researchers, please visit this inquiry in your labs. I might be getting angry without needing to.

Look at pill packaging

It’s an insane amount of plastic that producers add to the pill, allegedly to remind women to take their pill at the same time every day. PBS compiled a great history of pill packaging and reports:

The first prescription drug for healthy patients, the Pill neither treated nor prevented disease. Instead, taken daily, it prevented pregnancy by changing the hormonal balance in women's bodies. The Pill far surpassed other contraceptive methods, except abstinence, in effectiveness. All a woman had to do was remember to take it every day. Pill packages quickly evolved to remind women to take their daily doses.

The site also features images from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, showing the evolution of this incredibly excessive packaging. Click this link for all the pictures, it’s worth looking at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/gallery/index.html

Pill packaging is not at all sustainable

Pill users usually don’t recycle all this plastic, which includes the packets, the cases, everything. I never before stopped to consider throwing my pill materials into the recycling bin in my apartment, along with papers, old gladware, beer bottles, etc. No pill packets to be seen. Well, this is an incredible waste that ends up in landfills.

Sustainableday.com’s blogger and reporter “Stiven” comments:

Just yesterday I went into a pharmacy to buy: chapstick, floss, and pick up my wife's birth control…The birth control pills are really out of hand, they come in: a paper bag with the receipt, copy of the prescription and a coupon flier stapled to the outside of the bag, inside you find a colorful heavy cardboard box containing another plastic and foil dispenser, a not so small manual describing use, and a separate fuzzy purple plastic little booklet caring case. I felt incredibly guilty as I threw all this excess packaging "away" in the garbage right outside the store... All I wanted was healthy teeth, unchaped lips, and birth control but we can't have any of that without senseless pollution these days. We need packaging reform! (http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005634.html)

 Sing it, homie. We do need packaging reform, especially with health products. Go figure. Unhealthy human, unhealthy Earth.

 Sustainable Life guest blogger Anne Morgan writes about her move from the U.S. to Sweden. She was pleasantly surprised by her much-less-humiliating birth control, more discreetly packaged:

The reasonably-packaged Swedish birth control came in a blister pack with an unassuming, reusable, recyclable cardboard sheath. I received four sheaths for the year’s supply. In sharp contrast, my new American birth control is dispensed via a giant blister pack with a completely superfluous pink plastic case thingie and a pink vinyl sheath. I received 12 cases and sheaths for the year’s supply because heaven forbid we reuse the outrageous over-packaging.

 After I use up my prescription I’ll be switching to something with a smaller footprint that I’m less embarrassed to keep on my nightstand. And (my old pill company) will be receiving a letter from me accompanied by my year’s supply of birth control packaging. I’ll be damned if it’s going to MY landfill!  (http://michellemckay.typepad.com/sustainablelife/2007/10/overpacking-bir.html)

And the rest of us women can relate.

What can we do?

We should be writing to our pill providers. Women can vow to set our cell phone alarms to remind us instead of Ortho Tri Cyclen Low’s giant pink bubble case. Men can vow to remind their female partners when it’s that hour to get the Purple Yazmin out. Or do as I have, vowing to reuse the same blue Yaz slip for all future pill packs; don’t give me another one! Women can’t responsibly stop taking the pill, but producers must responsibly stop overpackaging their birth control pills.

Plastic Packaging: Potato plastics and bioplastic validity

I’m addressing a shortly discussed matter of interest in this post

Upon traveling through the Ring of Kerry in Southern Ireland a few weekends ago, I chatted with our tour guide from Galway. We passed a couple fields of windmills that generate energy for the towns, but she explained to me that most Irish people find these to be eyesores and not worth the small amount of energy they generate, in comparison to the energy Ireland needs and is trying to conserve.

I brought up how green and energy efficient Ireland seems to be, with its buildings only using heat/air at certain hours, many businesses keeping their indoor lights shut off, and stores charging people to use plastic bags. She explained to me a new solution in Ireland, potato plastic, that has been gaining interest for its green technology. Though green, this plastic is not at all energy efficient. Read on, homies.

Potato Plastic: Green, but not energy-efficient

Example of "spudware":

A new line of plastic eating utensils from the Dutch firm De Ster uses potato starch as the basic polymer. This application of potato starch to replace plastic is the result of a collaboration between the German firm BIOTEC (for raw materials) and Dutch manufacturer of disposables plastic worldwide, De Ster.

This is the first time potato plastic has been used in a product which replaces conventional plastic. De Ster has replaced standard plastic ware with an ergonomical, high-tech, high-design product.

This product was that made in reaction to demands for more recyclable materials rather than disposable. And hey, potatoes are easy to farm and produce: the plan would initially seem to be brilliant.

Potato starch is a biopolymer with the same properties as conventional plastics. In the manufacturing process the material can be treated like plastics, for instance subjected to normal injection moulding techniques. With these disposables a biodegradable product made from an agricultural raw material is completely reusable as compost. A new generation of biopolymers which can be recycled into cattle-fodder is currently being developed. 

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/810/

Support for bioplastics also takes into account the natural resources we use to produce plastics:

These new bioplastics are thus, made from plant starch and not crude oil and petroleum products. These bioplastics in turn, can be used to produce carpeting, upholstery fabric and recyclable plastic bottles, according to a report by the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.

The United Kingdom and Japan have already turned to potato-based plastics technology to manufacture items like ’spudware’ or plastic silverware from potatoes.

So if they don’t use up energy more energy, products are considered green.

http://www.ecofriend.org/entry/making-bio-plastics-from-potatoes/

A radically right-wing comment from Smithsonian.com on the bioplastics. Unfortunately, this dude has a point:

Corn Plastic [or potato plastic] is a neat experiment, but definitely not a good idea in tough times. The reality of world wide food shortages should make us all realize this is not the time to take farm land out of production to make energy inefficient substrates at the expense of feeding people.

Also, look at the commentary on the fact it actually takes more energy to produce. By the time the land is farmed, the raw materials transported, and processed, we are now being told that nothing has been gained energy wise.

In fact, we’re spending more money on energy to do so.

The man then goes on to say that PVC (plastics) when measured against bioplastics are not only more energy efficient, but also more socially responsible, cleaner, safer, and greener. The man seems to degenerate his validity with this, but at least he has the topic in his head. He brings up the arguments I’ve commonly heard.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/plastic.html

Final comment

Bioplastics entail the same issues as biofuel: they're not cost-effective or energy-efficient. It's a cool industry to learn about, but we're not green by turning to bioplastics to solve environmental issues. Negative 4 points for potato plastics.

Problems with generic water bottle products, problems with Nalgene

The Barcelona Debacle

After spending weeks chatting with my fellow intern Hannah about my plastic bottle toxin research, and after she promised to buy a safe bottle upon returning to the United States, she did me wrong this weekend.

She went to Barcelona and bought a generic aluminum bottle as a souvenir.

I was instantly appalled and spent the entire afternoon discussing her experiences with this bottle. We looked up the Spanish manufacturer of the bottle and we did taste test comparisons with my Sigg. Here is the discussion.

The water bottle industry does not usually concern itself with water safety

Unlike tap water, where consumers are provided with test results every year, the bottled water industry is not required to disclose the results of any contaminant testing that it conducts. Instead, the industry hides behind the claim that bottled water is held to the same safety standards as tap water. But with promotional campaigns saturated with images of mountain springs, and prices 1,900 times the price of tap water, consumers are clearly led to believe that they are buying a product that has been purified to a level beyond the water that comes out of the garden hose.

Americans drink twice as much bottled water today as they did ten years ago, for an annual total of over nine billion gallons with producer revenues nearing twelve billions. Purity should be included in a price that, at a typical cost of $3.79 per gallon, is 1,900 times the cost of public tap water. But EWG’s tests indicate that in some cases the industry may be delivering a beverage little cleaner than tap water, sold at a premium price. The health consequences of exposures to these complex mixtures of contaminants like those found in bottled water have never been studied.

Unlike public water utilities, bottled water companies are not required to notify their customers of the occurrence of contaminants in the water, or, in most states, to tell their customers where the water comes from, how and if it is purified, and if it is merely bottled tap water. 

http://www. org/reports/bottledwater ewg.

We have heard reports in the popular media that the actual water in these bottled water products is not pure. This is not only due to the water source, but also the manufacturer and packaging. Large quantities of this water is never tested before packaging, but exponentially less so post-packaging stage.

That said, outdoors consumers should demand more testing by bottle manufacturers and a thorough explanation of any potential risks.

It should be made compulsory for bottle manufacturers to disclose to consumers the materials used and/or found in their products. We’re now more often informed about the BPA quantities in these products, but this isn’t the only harmful toxin in these products, after all.

(As Hannah agreed that she could sense a metallic taste in her mouth after she swigged from her Barcelona bottle, I let her know that she had probably just ingested a mouthful of aluminum.)

I use a Sigg aluminum bottle because its inside liner keeps it from leaching toxins including the aluminum itself into my water. The source below identifies this liner to be “made from a water-based resin that is baked into the bottles, according to a (Sigg) company representative who just emailed me.”

http://www.thegoodhuman.com/2008/03/17/choosing-a-safe-reusable-water-bottle/

I trust this Sigg liner, despite its “secret formula” I’ve before discussed. I can deal with a water-based resin protecting me from aluminum eroding into my water and polluting my system. Aluminum, of course, is highly dangerous to ingest.

Aluminum can inhibit the body's ability to digest and make use of calcium, magnesium, iron, phosphorus and fluoride. This can cause anemia, prevent bone growth, and reduce bone density. Aluminum can also cause conditions which actually force calcium out of the bones. Either of these situations can bring on weakness and deformation in the bone structure with crippling effects. Toxicity can also result in aching muscles, speech problems, digestive problems, lowered liver function, colic, and impaired kidney function.

http://www.scrink.com/blog/wellness/2009/01/cut-aluminium-out-of-your-routine.html

Do all metal bottles have a liner?

Some stainless steel bottles do not require a liner. In the past, there had been some low-priced, low-quality aluminum bottles manufactured in Asia and distributed in Europe and parts of the USA which did not use a quality liner.

To me, this seems to suggest that most manufacturers now of any decent (even Barcelona) quality would use a liner of some sort. Your inference?

http://www.mysigg.com/index.asp?ID=5&PageAction=Custom#Do%20all%20metal%20water%20bottles%20use%20a%20liner?

I’ve also looked at Sigg’s top competing bottles to find if they require linings:

• Enviro New Wave SS, an aluminum bottle, has a lining that is 100% leach-free, according to its manufacturer.
  
• Klean Kanteen, a stainless steele product, will not leach metal into your water and has no liner.

http://green.thefind.com/pets/detail-new-wave-enviro-1-liter-stainless-steel-water-bottle-ss-loop-cap

And remember,

Like any material, plastic does degrade over time; you can see this in polycarbonate bottles when they become cloudy or faded in appearance. If you notice any change to the material, or if a bottle gives off a distinct plastic taste, it should no longer be used.

http://www.seattlepi.com/getaways/222673_gearjunkie05.html

This would be an example of a plastic bottle degrading toxins even other than BPA into your water.

(Here’s an interest report proving that Sigg is the best for not leaching materials. Take this with a grain of salt, but do use this if you’re pushing others to buy Sigg bottles.) http://www.mysiggg.com/LeachingMetals.pdf

BPA-free Nalgene vs. Sigg

Why should I spend $15-$20 on a SIGG when I could buy a $10 Lexan plastic bottle?, asks the SIGG FAQ page. Obviously, it's your call. Many people are satisfied with a Lexan plastic bottle (like a Nalgene). We feel there are some distinct advantages to a SIGG, both in function and in fashion:

 Weight – typically, SIGG bottles are 10-20% lighter-weight than Lexan, allowing you to lighten that load a bit in your backpack.

 Great Taste – SIGGs are truly taste neutral. Lexan brands may claim this but go ahead and put them to the test. Leave your filled plastic bottle out in the sun for a couple hours and see how your water tastes the next day – a bit like plastic we've been told.

 Durability – Check out Backpacker magazine's June 2006 issue where SIGG was put to the test against all the leading water bottle brands. When the smoke from the 100 pound cannon cleared, Backpacker declared SIGG "The World's Toughest Water Bottle"

 Style – SIGG's have been described as "works of art". For the extra few dollars, why not express yourself?

Sigg website at http://www.mysigg.com/index.asp?ID=5&PageAction=Custom

Other Aluminum materials vs. Sigg

I still trust the liner of a Sigg aluminum bottle over the obviously dangerous lack of liners on some and perhaps still inadequate liners on other aluminum bottles. Such as in the example of Hannah’s off-brand aluminum container from Barcelona, the company provided no information about its bottles’ liner material. Though a liner could have existed in this bottle (as the SIGG excerpt above seemed to imply that generic-brand manufacturers usually will make liners these days) these plastic liners may contain BPA or be simply inadequate at keeping aluminum out of the water; Hannah could still taste it, after all. I vote for the liner that leaves no aftertaste of metal in my water. 

And hey, I'm biased against Nalgene. Don't support a company that still makes products containing BPA despite knowing the health risks they cause. Sure Nalgene now makes BPA-free products to sell... at a higher cost to those consumers making the educated choice to spend it. Damn the company's unethical capitalism and support companies that only promote their safe products. When we're talking about health issues, there isn't room for simply hoping people will educate themselves about safe products. We need to only support companies that only sell safe products.

Recycling: Make wastes and plastics biodegradable!

As I’ve been living in Dublin, Ireland this summer and ignoring my duties to blog, I’d like to still report how many Sigg (aluminum) bottles I’ve spotted across Europe. Downtown Dublin’s hip scene rocks the bottles, the tourists rock the bottles. I see a trend of universal environmentalism and health consciousness here; or of just saving money. 

The process of biodegradation

However. I’ve been working at University College Dublin, where Dr. Kevin O’Connor is leading a microbiology group’s study about bugs that can actually change toxic materials into biodegradable waste. The article, posted on the UCD website and lined with pictures of plastic water bottles, was too good for me to pass up. Here are some bits from the article:(http://www.ucd.ie/expertiseatucd/researchshowcase/2009/05MAY/plastic/index.html)

Dr O’Connor from the UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science, and the Centre for Synthesis and Chemical Biology, first studied biodegradation, or the use of micro-organisms to degrade toxic compounds for his doctorate. He then undertook postdoctoral research in the Netherlands and Switzerland where he worked on using micro-organisms to make valuable compounds, in a process known as biocatalysis.

His current research in the field of biocatalysis has received a lot of attention recently but he’s been working on it since 2000. Making biodegradable plastic using different organisms was already a well-known procedure, one that the microbiologist and his team planned to expand on.

“What we were trying to do was come up with a different approach. We were asking if pollutants could be converted into valuable products like biodegradable plastic?”

Imagine if biodegradation caught on with water beverage companies. Imagine if all plastics could be biodegradable, clearing us of our landfill issues in the United States.

The original compound that Dr O’Connor used in the process was styrene, the main ingredient of polystyrene. But the team realised that the conversion of polystyrene itself to biodegradable plastics would be of greater value.

However, their particular bacterium didn’t grow on polystyrene. So he contacted Professor Walter Kaminsky in the University of Hamburg, an expert in pyrolysis – a special technique that uses temperatures of up to 520 degrees to heat the plastic in a vacuum, producing a liquid form of the styrene.

This process, I’m sure, cannot be cheap.

Dr O’Connor had a fair idea that their bug would grow when fed this styrene oil, and indeed it did, producing the biodegradable plastic PHA (polyhydroxalkanoate).

Extracting this plastic from the bacteria is a very simple procedure that involves soaking the bugs in a mild detergent. “Basically the detergent rips the bugs open in order to extract the small granules of plastic from each cell,” explains Dr O’Connor. The plastic is cleaned and it is then ready to be used.

This extraction process might be simple to carry out, but imagine the cost of the equipment needed to soak grand colonies of these bugs in detergent. I’m skeptical about whether a large-scale version of this process would be financially, or even technologically, feasible.

At the industrial level, the two-step process is carried out on a large scale, producing up to 1,000 litres of plastic – that’s a lot of bugs. Dr O’Connor is now working on improving the efficiency of the technique, using a combination of feeding and molecular strategies. At present some 30-35% of each bacterium is plastic; his team are looking to increase this yield to as much as 80%.

One one hand, this 80% may seem incredible, but the ranges of goods that could be made from this form of plastic may not span everything we imagine. Polystyrene water bottles and tupperware might be feasible for the largest companies to make, but probably not for all other products. Maybe we shouldn’t suddenly get excited that we could recycle anything plastic.

Keep in mind, we haven't really been recycling:

On the other hand, remember that the Sierra Club has reported that Americans discard over 30 million plastic bottles every day. Over 40% of the beverages purchased each day are plastic water bottles. Switching these plastics over to be more recyclable materials would significantly decrease our waste that won’t be broken down efficiently.

And think: no, people are not recycling enough at all, and materials aren’t really recyclable. In 2005 the EPA reported that only 5.8% of the then-26 million tons of plastics manufactured in the U.S. are recycled. We need biodegradable plastics if we will continue to use plastic products.

“Polystyrene is a very recyclable plastic,” stresses Dr O’Connor. The problem is, once it’s recycled, people aren’t quite sure what to do with it. Recycled polystyrene produces a plastic of a lower grade and so it cannot be used in the food industry. It can be made into ‘timber look’ plastic for making picnic tables and chairs, for example, but O’Connor says the market for this is limited.

Create a market through rattling the media. Imagine that by creating a greater hype in the public about the multiple environmental and health dangers of plastic material use, there will be a company incentive in the market to please customers and create polystyrene products. Call your local newspapers. Write a blog post. Po-ly-sty-rene.

Currently, polystyrene for recycling is exported to China. But Dr O’Connor believes this is an inefficient practice, and proposes instead a municipal recycling scheme, where people deposit their waste plastic.

I think I’ll be emailing Dr. O’Connor about the United States’ Bottle Bills, being passed and amended rapidly throughout the United States. Under these state systems, you pay an extra couple cents when you purchase a plastic product. You get the return when you collect your bottles and deposit them. Get your money back. To reciprocate, the U.S. can take Ireland’s example of its grocery stores charging customers for plastic bags. I’ve been stuffing loaves of bread and hummus in my purse after my evening EuroSpar trips.

And this revolutionary method of recycling is not limited to polystyrene, or Dr O’Connor’s particular bug, for that matter. “We have used our technology for polystyrene but you can apply the same strategy to recycling any plastic. Also there are hundreds of different bacteria that will make different types of plastic so opportunities are huge,” he says.

Market for competition and innovation! Bank on this, struggling scientists of America and Ireland! Grab a science lab and go.

But what does it really mean to be a biodegradable plastic?

This means the plastic can break down chemically without any catalyst or outside chemical. A biodegradable plastic bag would decompose on the side of the road instead of tangling up small birds and crowding our landscapes (this was the case in Ireland before the switch to no-bag stores). Biodegragation uses microorganisms, or “bugs,” to break down these films on the plastics. The materials are enlarged in structure and “metabolized until remaining materials” are no longer harmful to the environment. Easy.

Yet a downside to this process is that the carbon inside biodegradable plastics will be released upon this metabolism process, producing carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the air, potentially in high amounts. If made from other materials, like animal products, methane could be released instead. Methane is, of course, another great greenhouse gas. (http://www.astm.org/Standards/D6400.htm).

Yet we could still weigh this: would we rather have greater greenhouse gas emissions or greater landfill buildup? Unfortunately, plastics producers are making this critical choice. We as consumers need to instead decide upon this and be lobbying for legislation or pressuring companies. Write to Glad. Write to Aquafina.

What is recyclable for now? Not everything:

 I’ve gotten many inquiries about which plastic materials are actually recyclable, so I’ll post a convenient guide I found online about what those little numbers on your plastic bottles mean. (http://www.ehow.com/how_2282329_determine-what-plastics-recyclable.html).

 Just because a product has a recycle symbol on it does not mean that it is recyclable. The following steps will help you determine which of your plastics are recyclable.

1) Look for the recycle symbol with letters and numbers on the bottom of the plastic item. Plastic numbers 1 through 7 are generally recyclable.The list in step 2 can help you determine which plastics to recycle.

2) No. 1 PET: Polyethylene terephthalate--Fizzy drink bottles and oven-ready meal trays.No. 2 HDPE: High-density polyethylene--Bottles for milk and washing-up liquids.No. 3 PVC: Polyvinyl chloride--Food trays, cling film, bottles for squash, mineral water and shampoo.No. 4 LDPE: Low density polyethylene--Carrier bags and bin liners.No. 5 PP: Polypropylene--Margarine tubs, microwaveable meal trays.No. 6 PS: Polystyrene--Yogurt pots, foam meat or fish trays, hamburger boxes and egg cartons, vending cups, plastic cutlery, protective packaging for electronic goods and toys.No. 7 Other: Any other plastics that do not fall into any of the above categories. An example is melamine, which is often used in plastic plates and cups.

3) Take your plastics numbers 1 through 7 to your local recycling center.

Remember, though, that I rarely rarely rarely advocate buying plastic bottle products, even if recyclable (and even if BPA-free, though BPA hasn’t been included in this discussion tonight). Remember that you’re an educated consumer and/or recycler, but those around you are not. When they see you buy a bottle you’ll recycle, they’ll follow your trend to buy, but not to recycle. When they see you buy a Nalgene bottle that is (only now, new and improved) BPA-free, they’ll follow your trend to buy a knockoff plastic container, but not to be sure it’s BPA-free. Think about your fellow citizens who aren’t informed. If you’re going to lead them, lead them to products that are always safe: buy an aluminum or stainless steel water bottle.