Bottle Your Own Water

Why bottle it? It's convenient, good for you, and you will then be less likely to shell out $1.50 for water if you've got your own bottle.

Why glass? It is better than plastic and it's easy to find a super-cool bottle to reuse. We use glass bottles with stoppers built in (see picture) but you could use any glass bottle with a resealable top, screw top, etc. I wouldn't use cork, because I think I'd knock it off in my bag.

Bottled water is such a scam. Oh, it’s handy, but it is often nothing more than tap water, sometimes much worse than tap water. They may add minerals. Big deal, they're draining the local aquifir. Bottled water generates so much waste, both in the shipping from someplace else, and the disposal of the plastics (80% end up in landfills). Every ton of PET produced equals 3 tons of carbon dioxide.

And don’t even get me started on the plastics! Did you know the plastics they’ve been using can leach into the water? Even those outdoorsy bottles can be not so nice. Plastic is non-renewable, made from oil, etc.

That plastic bottle gets shipped here from someplace else. Huge amounts of water are pulled out of that local community and shipped here, using resources, dropping their water table, getting us used to paying for water... it makes no sense.

Bottling your own water reduces the waste and contaminants. If you like, filter it first. We do. In some countries, this might be a necessary step, but in ours, it really isn't (unless you are on a well, in which case, you will want to filter that stuff). We're just persnickety like that.