Volunteering is thirsty work, and staying hydrated during any activity is important. Most of the National Public Lands Day sites will offer bottles of water for their volunteers. But the habitual, single use of disposable plastic bottles creates problems all over the globe, with 189 million of them littered annually along highways, waterways and parks in the United States alone.
The folks at “Blue Q” in Massachusetts (blueq ) are serious about the environment, making a $50,000 pledge to The Nature Conservancy partly from the sale of their steel water bottles.
Blue Q operations manager Trevor Ward says the company’s bottles have no plastic liners, to eliminate the chance of transmission of Bisphenol A — or BPA — a chemical used in the manufacture of plastics. The chemical in high dosages can mimic hormones, which can lead to negative health effects.
Sigg and Nalgene, two other popular reusable water bottle manufacturers, have stopped using BPA in their products. CamelBak makes a BPA-free stainless steel bottle, as well.
“Stainless steel is clean, pure and simple,” Ward says. “We repeatedly lead-test every batch of our bottles, even if a particular design was tested a year ago. We are not experts in conservation, but a stainless steel bottle in its lifetime replaces 4,000 plastic ones.”
But sometimes, bottled water is all that is available. Why use a bottle once then toss it? Nine out of 10 plastic bottles end up in landfills, where it can take more than 500 years — some say 1,000 years — to break down.
Remember the mantra, “reduce, reuse, recycle,” and avoid buying plastic bottles in the first place. But, if you must, reuse the bottle as many times as you can, then recycle it. Linda J. Buch
