At one time or another, you've probably heard that plastic beverage bottles can leach chemicals into your drink, but this isn't just a rumor; it's a known fact. Plastic beverage bottles contain harmful chemicals, including Phthlalates and Bisephenol A, which can leach into your beverage and make their way into your body, and I'm no expert with chemicals and their direct effects on the human body, but I have a feeling that it's probably not a good thing to have traces of plastic chemicals floating around in your bloodstream.
But aside from being harmful to your body, one-time-use plastic bottles also have extremely negative effects on the environment. In most cases, a quick solution to that problem would be to simply recycle the product, but plastic bottles are an exception, as they only have about a 20% recycle rate. The other 80% are most commonly put into landfills, and sometimes downcycled into other products such as fibers and carpet, but with America's disposal of about 30 million plastic bottles a day, using plastic beverage bottles just isn't reasonable or responsible.
So, if not plastic water bottles, what are we to use for on-the-go storage of beverages? There are a couple of options. My preference is glass, since the risk of plastic chemicals leaching out of the bottle material is avoided (not sure about the cap, though). Another worthy material would be stainless steel, although I've heard that the liners may contain BPA even if the product is labeled as BPA-free. Glass seems to me to be the better option, but I recommend doing some research of your own to find an option that you like.
But aside from being harmful to your body, one-time-use plastic bottles also have extremely negative effects on the environment. In most cases, a quick solution to that problem would be to simply recycle the product, but plastic bottles are an exception, as they only have about a 20% recycle rate. The other 80% are most commonly put into landfills, and sometimes downcycled into other products such as fibers and carpet, but with America's disposal of about 30 million plastic bottles a day, using plastic beverage bottles just isn't reasonable or responsible.
So, if not plastic water bottles, what are we to use for on-the-go storage of beverages? There are a couple of options. My preference is glass, since the risk of plastic chemicals leaching out of the bottle material is avoided (not sure about the cap, though). Another worthy material would be stainless steel, although I've heard that the liners may contain BPA even if the product is labeled as BPA-free. Glass seems to me to be the better option, but I recommend doing some research of your own to find an option that you like.
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