Labels

Its Earth Day SO Chuck Your Freakin' Plastic Water Bottle - Win The Alternative!

If you haven't heard, today's Earth Day. I can't fathom how you possibly missed this fact since everybody and their mama is on the Earth Day bandwagon these days. It’s even the number one “trending topic” on Twitter today… I wonder how Justin Bieber feels about that!

I'm not one to attend a rally but it's not because I'm annoyed by all the Earth Day mania. I figure the more people talk about recycling, conservation, not pouring toxic chemicals down the drain or throwing trash on the ground, the better.

My pet peeve? Plastic water bottles. Seriously, how hard is it to get a re-usable water bottle? When I lived in China, drinking water straight out of the tap water was a no-no -it could make you seriously ill- but I still rarely drank bottled water. Instead, I drank hot tea made from boiled water.

LA water isn’t going to kill me (as far as I know) but I can’t stand the way it tastes. So, I drink filtered water. I pour it in my trusty re-usable stainless steel water canteen – and I fill it up either at work or at home.

I’ve been a using Brita pitchers at home since I first heard about them back in the late 1990s and I’ve been a fan for awhile of the their FilterForGood partnership with Nalgene – all in pursuit of cutting bottled water waste. How can you help?

Take the FilterForGood pledge to reduce bottled water waste at FilterForGood.com

Download the Clean Up Our World’s Water guide for tips from the Surfrider Foundation on how to organize a beach, lake, river or street cleanup in your area.

Win And Help The Planet: Filter For Good’s generously agreed to give one lucky Los Angelista reader the goods you need to kick your plastic bottle of water habit forever.

One Brita “Bella” Pitcher – a super cute circular pitcher that retails for $22.99.
One Filter For Good Nalgene bottle – that’s where you pour your filtered water & then take it to work, school or the gym. It retails for $10.20.
To Win: Leave a brief comment by 1:00 PM PST on Friday, April 23rd telling why you think it’s so hard for people to kick the bottled water habit.

Rules:

  • You must live in the United States
  • Make sure the comment has a name and your email. If you are anonymous and I can't tell who you are, your comment entries will be disqualified.

For additional Los Angelista giveaway rules and legal disclaimers, please click here.

Want to go the extra mile for the planet? One other simple choice that FilterForGood encourages in an effort to improve the environment is recycle your Brita filter and any other plastics marked with the tougher-to-recycle #5 through the very cool Gimme 5 recyling program. Drop your recyclables off at any participating Whole Foods and instead of being burned at a dump, they’ll be recycled and turned into a Preserve product.


Good luck to everyone who enters and Happy Earth Day!


UPDATE: We have a winner! Congrats to Mommy Melee!

Email Post
Labels:

Comments

mosaicmama said…
i think some people are lazy and want convenience at any cost, which is lame since it is not only more environmentally conscious, but also CHEAPER to drink filtered water from a reusable bottle!
4:19 PM, April 22, 2010
dolphyngyrl said…
For me it's a taste thing (primarily). Our water has a chlorinated "tang" to it, and it starts tasting "dusty" if it sits in your cup or bottle for more than an hour or so.

I tried using the stainless steel water bottles (love!), but it gets so hot in Sacramento in the summer that they are useless unless you want hot tea! So I hoard the plastic reusables so I can fill them & freeze them when it's hot out.
4:45 PM, April 22, 2010
Jen said…
I have met people who claim tap water makes them ill. I think it's all in their head and they should just filter it to make themselves feel better. Other than that, I think it's just laziness and apathy. I only drink bottled water if I'm out without my trusty water bottle and it's the only option. I usually just go without and wait for a water fountain, though.
5:20 PM, April 22, 2010
Me said…
I've been using Brita for some years now. I use the kind that filters water from the faucet. I don't believe bottled water is any cleaner than my filtered water. It's not economical and the plastic bottles are such waste.
6:59 PM, April 22, 2010
Eunice said…
There are some parts of Los Angeles county where tap water is contaminated and will make you ill. There was an in-depth study done by the NYT about this problem. It comes out brown and the residents cannot filter it themselves. I'm just saying, there are some people out there who need to buy bottled water. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/us/17water.html?_r=1

Of course most people who do buy water bottles don't do it because it's a necessity and these days it's probably because it's habit more than anything else. That said, my whole family definitely drinks tap water. I recently started using stainless steel water bottles too and they work great!
12:18 AM, April 23, 2010
Bella said…
I used to be a bottle water junkie. I'm a huge water drinker, so it was always just super easy to grab a bottle, toss it into the purse and head out. I think a lot of people still use bottled water because of how easily accessible it is. If you forget your kleen kanteen at home, or if you haven't had time to clean out your bottle to reuse it, you can always just grab a bottle of water at Starbucks, the gas station, anywhere really. A lot of people don't want to refill with tap water, and water fountains aren't always easy to find. Maybe if people started educating themselves on the health risks, and if they started adding up how much money they waste on bottled water, it would be easier for them to kick the habit.
10:47 AM, April 23, 2010
bernbabybern said…
I think it's because they're used to buying the water bottles and sometimes they may feel like it takes too long to refill. I, myself, refill a reuseable bottle.
11:16 AM, April 23, 2010
Maria Melee said…
For me, the issue is that others keep buying them and bringing them into my home.
11:53 AM, April 23, 2010
L.A. Stylist Mom said…
Honestly? Lazy and incapable of thinking ahead and/or seeing outside of themselves. Harsh but true, I'm afraid. Happy Earth Day to you too!
11:58 AM, April 23, 2010
Robyn said…
We're pretty much a re-usable bottle family... but we do have the plastic bottles on hand for two things 1) disaster preparedness (in case our water becomes undrinkable.) and 2) for long road trips or vacations where bringing our own resuables just isn't going to work or we don't know the quality of the water where we are going.

Thanks! We desperately need a new Brita... I think ours may grow legs and walk off it is so old. :)

Robyn
whosthebossblog AT gmail DOT com
12:00 PM, April 23, 2010
Post a Comment

Popular Posts