Ideal Bite

i agree that there seems to have been a real lack of research done on this tip. I do have Sigg AND Nalgene bottles. the water in the Sigg bottles freezes in the winter and heat up too readily in the real heat of some summer days. Glass is too hard to recycle in many areas (when you need to get rid of it eventually)and it's fragility certainly isn't a plus.

This is totally false! Johns Hopkins issued an internal memo was saying that this rumor is false. You will not get cancer from reusing water bottles. It does not unleash toxins. If I can find the e-mail I will repost it later

As I stated above this is totally false! The link I am posting is legit coming from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. See link below. http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/articles/halden_dioxins.html

Thanks Becky for the link. It is very informative, but he doesn't say it is totally false. You can be contaminated from bottled water, but not necessarily by drinking it. "First, people should be more concerned about the quality of the water they are drinking rather than the container it’s coming from. Many people do not feel comfortable drinking tap water, so they buy bottled water instead. The truth is that city water is much more highly regulated and monitored for quality. Bottled water is not. It can legally contain many things we would not tolerate in municipal drinking water. Having said this, there is another group of chemicals, called phthalates that are sometimes added to plastics to make them flexible and less brittle. Phthalates are environmental contaminants that can exhibit hormone-like behavior by acting as endocrine disruptors in humans and animals. If you heat up plastics, you could increase the leaching of phthalates from the containers into water and food." inventorspot.com/blog/gloriacampos

Regarding your cocktail factoid: koala's are NOT bears. Sorry, I'm a biology major and I'm anal about using the right words for things.

Personally, I am not switching from bottled water because of quality or worry of the plastic leaking into my drinking water. Those are concerns but my primary concerns are the expense and the waste stream that is created. Even if the bottles are recycled, plastic doesn't recycle 100% like glass or metal does so it just makes sense to me to eliminate as much plastic consumption as possible. Even when shopping, I will attempt to purchase everything in glass jars and bottles over plastic, even if it costs more. Just to eliminate a waste stream. My personal goal is to generate under 30 lbs of landfill waste per week for my family of 5, 4 cats and a dog. Everything else must be recycled or reused.

Just wanted to say thanks for the shout-out to the evangelicals - it's true, many are now very concerned about the environment. Although I don't personally identify as one, my friends at my evangelical school are very concerned about being more green and many are using reusable bottles (all Nalgene, but one step at a time!). So when you say you look like "crazy evangelicals" with your matching bottles, I can only assume you mean to compliment that group's environmental awareness...right??

Please take the time to read the following link. The scare concerning Polycarbonate and Bisphenol-A in reuseable water bottles is simply the media pushing the fear button once again. If you want the facts, please check this out... http://www.bisphenol-a.org/human/polyplastics.html Even San Francisco has backed off on their ban (noted above) of the material since they have taken the time to properly educate themselves.

While there is controversy around the plastic resin-liner of aluminum bottles as well as the aluminum itself, why not just be safe and use stainless steel - i love my kleen canteen!