Plastic Bottles

A big step towards reducing our plastic footprint is eliminating our consumption of single-use plastic bottles. One of the most common reasons we consume plastic bottles is to increase our consumption of supposedly "healthy" and "clean" water. Then when we are finished we can just recycle the bottle. It seems like a win-win situation: we are able to consume clean water and there is no waste. It turns out that neither of these reasons are actually true. In order to get some sense of what really occurs throughout the life cycle of a plastic bottle, please watch the following video on bottled water.

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Objective

Your objective for this week is to abstain from purchasing any bottled drinks, including water, soda, and juice; milk is a little more complicated and will be addressed later on. Two easy steps towards eliminating your reliance on bottled water are to use a tap water filtration system (e.g., using a refrigerator dispenser, kitchen faucet filter, or a pitcher) and purchase a reusable water bottle. This will save a lot of money and time in the long run as you will no longer need to make trips to the store to purchase those giant packs of bottled water. Another item you may want to purchase is a water cooler for when you are hosting several people. Igloo, for example, sells coolers ranging in size from 2 to 10 gallons.