Eight Reusable Water Bottles Compared
Bottled water's popularity stems from a strange confluence of circumstance: just as people started realizing that chugging several thousand calories of sugared soda a day was unhealthy, easily accessible public water sources dried up. When's the last time you saw—let alone used—a public water fountain?
In the process of breaking of the habit of buying bottled water when there are cheaper options, you might find yourself shlepping around a reusable water bottle; Slate's Laura Moser took eight out for a spin, judging them on portability, aftertaste, and style. Here's hoping that last factor becomes more important in the days ahead, encouraging water bottle use, without heading into the inevitable $10,000 "Portable Patrician Pro" bottle that grinds up sheets of gold leaf to flicker down into a lead crystal jug of sustainable public tap water.
Two choices from Moser's piece caught my eye: the Platy from Platypus Hydration, which is a collapsible bottle tough enough to be boiled; and this corn-based water bottle with a built-in chlorine filter. You can't boil that one, but toss it back in the compost pile when it starts to get funky and it will decompose in just three months.
Message in a Bottle [Slate]
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Firs thing I think of when I think of plastic water bottles... We bought a sippy cup for my son that specifically uses plastic that won't leech it.
I use a 0.6L Sigg aluminum (recyclable, non-leaching) water bottle. It works very well, and doesn't tend to hold flavors very strongly so I can fill it with Gatorade and not be tasting it in my water for 6 months. The Slate article mentions that the Sigg bottles are hard to clean. You can buy bottle brushes and cleaning tabs for them, but for most cleaning I just fill the bottle halfway with hot water, a drop of dish soap and shake like hell. For more thorough cleanings denture tabs work well (they're cheaper than the Sigg tabs, and work equally well on stainless travel mugs).
Oh, and maybe New York is lacking in public water fountains, but I used one in Chicago two nights ago and passed about 5 on my bike ride yesterday.