I do not own a stainless steel water bottle. They are highly recommended by Beth Terry of Fake Plastic Fish fame. Back when I was working on my Dad’s farm in the summer, we always drank water from a reused plastic 2 liter soda bottle.

I carried on with that practice during most of my years at the sawmill. As luck would have it, some 21st century technology required the input of purified water, so the company installed a filtration system in one building. We were blessed with some water coolers and a hose from which to refill them.

When I managed to land my awesome job roasting coffee, it was for a company that had a cafe attached to the plant so of course they had to have a system for dispensing good water. I drank from a glass.

If I were commuting to a job every day now, I would most probably invest in a stainless steel water bottle and fill it from my Brita pitcher at home.

Three doors down from where I live, a typical neighborhood shop sells cooking oil, vinegar, bleach and detergents in identical bottles that are delivered and picked up by the same truck. The soft drink suppliers bring both plastic and glass to the store, but they only pick up the glass.

My casual observation is that close to half of the non beverage trade of liquids is carried out using returnable glass.

Plastic and aluminum appears to have returnable glass beat in the beverage trade. I could be wrong about this. When I attended a wedding reception this summer, I was served a 200ml returnable glass bottle of soft drink. Most small stores have soft drinks available in both returnable and disposable containers. Local customers are often not charged the deposit with the understanding that they will bring the bottle back to the store in a timely fashion.

It’s actually a lot like North America 30 years ago. I would love to see someone do a careful study of the environmental costs of the two options in a small economy.

I was happy to see this big bin installed on the public beach access this summer. A lot of water bottles that may have otherwise ended up in the sea are placed in it. At the same time it serves as a daily reminder to me that collecting and recycling plastics is a costly and inefficient process. My blog is supposed to focus on the first ‘R’, Reduction. I have reduced my own consumption of plastic water bottles as much as possible by drinking filtered tap water.

Here are a few quotes that I have found, both optimistic and pessimistic about recycling plastic…

Recycling is almost universally regarded as a virtue. I beg to differ. The act of recycling actually means that we have failed to reduce or reuse.
- Gary Hirshberg

Recycling a single plastic bottle can conserve enough energy to light a 60W bulb for up to 6 hours.
- South Lakeland Recycling

I am not sure how they got these numbers. The fact that a lot of plastic is transported for huge distances leads me to doubt the figure.

The majority of the plastics we recycle, regardless of type, end up in China, where worker safety standards are virtually nonexistent and materials are processed under dirty, primitive conditions…
- Mindfully.org

Recycling one ton of plastic saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space.
- Earth911

These quotes are starting to look like ‘tweets’. Maybe I will recycle them

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Drinking water from plastic water bottles when your local tap water is safe and healthy is a big waste of money and resources.

Disposable plastic beer glasses are recommended by many authorities on serving alcohol at large parties…

…You need to invest in some plastic beer cups. The investment is relatively cheap. You can get a large stack of plastic beer cups for about the same price you are going to pay for a bottle of dish detergent to clean all those glasses.

The savings in time is astronomically higher. Instead of washing and drying all those glasses, just pull out a black plastic bag, sweep them all into it, and you’re done.

I think the most obvious alternative to plastic beer glasses is to have your guests drink straight from returnable glass bottles. The only drawback that I can see with this is the safety issue. I attended an Agricultural College in Canada. I saw a lot of beer drinking at pubs and events. Most of these events did not involve disposable cups and I can only remember a handful of bottle related injuries. One or two of them were very memorable.

A slightly more inventive alternative would be to ask your guests to bring their own drinking vessel. Those wacky medieval recreationists do that all the time.

Serving beer from plastic laundry detergent jugs is a step in the wrong direction. Don’t do it.

If your party is commemorating something important, you could shell out for keepsake glassware. If you bring home a beer glass or champagne flute from someone’s special day, don’t have it sitting on your windowsill filled with plant cuttings that you are trying to root when they visit you after the divorce. I’m just sayin’.

One of the main points that she makes in her tweets is that many people who are shamed out of drinking bottled water are turning to soft drinks as an alternative. This assertion was pause for thought to say the least. I personally choose to avoid soft drinks except for rare occasions and I actively discourage my kids from drinking them. They still use some of their discretionary funds on the stuff. In a society like America, with its skew towards obesity, pushing people toward the HFCS is not a move in the right direction.

What remains to be seen is whether this argument is based on solid research. A reduction in the consumption of bottled water combined with an increase in soda sales is not evidence. A survey that asks questions about the reasons for beverage choices could be suggestively worded. You ask people if they are doing something out of concern for the environment and they are pretty likely to say yes.

Soft drinks are marketed so aggressively that it’s pretty hard to point at something like environmental concern about bottled water as influencing consumption.

Photo Credit: FoundPhotosLJ

The frustrating thing about the industry backlashes against environmental activism is that they often have a fundamental dishonesty that prevents dialog with those who hold an opposing view. It seems to me that they often word their press releases like they are helping to inform that general public while the real objective is to influence legislators. In a democracy, those legislators are interested in public opinion and the intellectually lazy ones can have their perceptions skewed by corporate lobbyists.

UPDATE: The source that Bottled Water Babe used to support her claim that people are switching from bottled water to bottled soft drinks is a Telegraph item that relies heavily on information and interpretation supplied by the National Hydration Council. This council was founded by the UKs three biggest water bottlers. As I suspected, they take dry numbers about sales trends for beverages and use them to support their viewpoint.

The Telegraph recently published a bizarrely upbeat report on an American woman killing an elephant in Zimbabwe. It was a perfect example of lazy journalism. The tone of the reporting mirrored the bravado and self promotion of the woman’s blog and talk about her on hunting forums.

This particular vanguard of old media seems to be like one of those poor albatross mothers who picks up any brightly colored garbage that is floating around and then regurgitates it for her chicks to swallow.

The wholesale abandonment of disposable coffee cups is a revolution whose time has come. The White House of George W. Bush switched from expanded polystyrene cups to biodegradable paper. Team Obama is looking for an even greener option.

An issue of concern to many is the cafeteria. So, let me give everyone a brief update. We took a small but significant step when we started selling new reusable coffee mugs in the cafeteria and the Foggy Bottom coffee shop. I am pleased that so many of you decided to support this endeavor. So much so that they sold out immediately, but now are again available for sale. (State Department Earth Day Remarks)

The simplest and most convenient way to personally eliminate disposable cups is to sit down at home or at a cafe and drink from a reusable cup. If you drink so much coffee that this seems like a hardship, you might want to consider cutting down. Three 8 ounce cups of coffee per day provides the recommended maximum of 400mg of caffeine. If your schedule simply doesn’t have room for a sit down cup, get a travel mug. Lots of cafes offer discounts to customers that fill up using their own mug.

I blogged about buying coffee in bulk to cut down on packaging waste back in 2007. That is the best way to buy coffee if you live in a place with local roasters. If you can find it, Fair Trade Organic coffee in bulk is the absolute ideal way to get your coffee fix.

I think I may have found the second best way to buy coffee today. One of the most famous Italian coffee roasters sells coffee in these nice metal canisters.

It looks to me like there is no BPA lining on these cans. That would make sense since there is little risk of food poisoning with roasted coffee. The canisters are durable and attractive and they can be used to store other dry goods after you have finished your coffee. A French press contains a lot less plastic than a typical drip coffee maker. It also makes better coffee.

Researchers at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt are the first to find consistent contamination of bottled water with a hormonally active substance leaching from PET.

It’s not a big study and I expect that it will be countered with research funded by the plastics industry. Their research will use different methodology and the results will be interpreted differently.

My main reasons for not buying bottled water are related to the impact of the bottles on the environment rather than on the water inside them. I would drink water from a plastic water bottle if that was all that was available to me and I was thirsty.

The Evolution of Leprechaun

If you were to ask anyone to come up with a few things that they associate with St. Patrick’s Day, silly plastic hats might be the second thing mentioned after alcohol. Many of these cheap plastic hats end up strewn around the vicinity of the bars and parade routes where people celebrate this special day, along with a few beer glasses (not beer goggles, people take those home with them). Please consider buying a non-plastic green hat that will last for years and can even be worn on non-Irish days. This one is very green and slightly amusing.