Today is World Environment Day

What are you doing to help preserve the environment?

My pet peeve is excess use of water in small plastic bottles. I always admonish my family when they reach for the bottle rather than use a cup and take water form large jug. I keep reminding them that the small ones are only when we go out and need to take some water with us. I know, I know we should have reusable bottles – sadly they were getting lost, forgotten and left behind too often. When they made it back I had to make sure that they were cleaned daily. Some unfortunate designs virtually prevented the drinking spout to be thoroughly cleaned and the inside straws would grow moldy.  I was not very happy with most of them and replacing on a monthly basis was costly and not great for the environment either.

This speaks volumes! 

A while ago I have started to drink lemon water in the mornings or rather squeeze half a lemon into the bottle and take it with me to work. Ups! Non reusable bottle! Now that’s a big NO NO. So I am off to the store to get me some fancy but user friendly water container.

In the meantime I am trying to really limit the number of bottles we send to the landfill. Those bottles are not biodegradable so will be lying around for years and years leaching toxic chemicals into our ground water.

How are you managing your water needs? Do you drink tap water and refill your bottle on the go, bring your own filtered or like us rely on store bought bottled one?

Have a look at this short video made by Annie Leonard. She is a great advocate for reducing waste and an author of the many animated movies in the “The Story of Stuff” series.

“The Story of  Bottled Water” only 8 minutes long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0

Most water that we buy is “purified water” Which simply means that it is FILTERED TAP WATER.  Bottles do not decompose and in North America only about 13% of them get recycled. That amounts to about 2 million tons. Rest ends up in the landfills. It does not sound like we are getting such a good deal anymore.

There is a variety of filters available – from filtering water for the whole house to small portable or under sink mounted ones. Some have certifications from international organizations like NSF International that provides standards and certificates for food and water.

Few choices of filters to consider:

Activated Carbon Filters – trap impurities – eliminate copper, lead and mercury – parasites, pesticides, and many others.

Reverse Osmosis – separates impurities from water using a membrane – eliminates parasites, copper, mercury, lead and cadmium, arsenic and a few others. The down side is that during cleaning process a significant amount of water gets wasted.

UV disinfection – UV light kills bacteria and other microorganisms.

I use tap water for cooking and to make tea but we never drink it unless it is boiled first. In the past I used variety of filtering devices and I think I may be time to get one again.