03 June 2008

The story of the Nalgene bottle (a product review)

As promised, here is the deal with the Nalgene bottles.

Once upon a time, Nalgene made awesome water bottles. Hippies used them, camping people used them, bicycle riding people used them, regular people even used them. Some had "Life is Good" or Dave Matthews Band stickers on them, some were pretty and pink, some were pee yellow with orange tops. They all smelled good, kind of like a chlorinated pool, and even when your bottle sat in your hot car all day, your water was warm but it tasted good.

But then came the dreaded email cancer. BPA, or Bispenol- A, has been shown to leach from plastics such as baby bottles into foods. So when a picture of my pink Nalgene appeared on this blog, a poster commented that they were phasing out the BPA bottles, and I contacted Nalgene to find out what was what.

In came a product called Tritan, made by Eastman. And with it came [in the mail] a new bottle, called the OTG ("On The Go") . So, I tried it, and it's a nice water bottle. It looks very similar, the only real difference I noticed was that the chlorine smell isn't really there. The water still tastes really good, but I don't smell it, which is sort of frightening. I guess I was smelling cancer causing chemicals and liking them. Anyway, I like this bottle, and I'm not just saying it because it was free, although I like it better because it was free.

If I were to buy one for myself, I'd probably pick the regular open mouth kind. I'm old school like that. I have a "plastic bags blow" sticker to put on it. But I'm sure you're not surprised at the ending of this story.

By the way, for the love of God, don't buy bottled water. Seriously. There's no reason for it. It's expensive, pollutes, and is silly. Why pay for something that comes out of your tap? I have a Brita filter, I change it every 3 months, I buy the filters at CVS with my extra care bucks. If you want to know more about it, I recommend this book. Literally.

1 comment:

Monica said...

Very cool. I will have to pick up one for work. I *gulp* bring a bottle of water to work EVERY DAY! I too smell plastic. I can't drink out of something smelly. I will take you on your word that you didn't smell the plastic. I am anal like that.