Trash the water bottles -- or don't
I just washed and refilled my single-use water bottles. Put them in the fridge to chill. Will pull them out one by one as needed. Oops. Shouldn't do that, says this TIME magazine article.Single-use water bottles -- you know, the ones with names like Dasani or Aquafina -- are made of polyethylene terephthalate, or PET. It's a lightweight plastic used in many drink bottles. But it's not intended for re-use. Here's why: PET degrades with use and its wrinkled surface can host germs. And backwash too.
Should you re-use your bottles, then? Not for drinking. Use them for a flower vase. Or recycle. Just don't wash, refill with water, and chill. Like I just did.
Now, like every good story, there's two sides. This article says as long as single-use bottles are cleaned properly with hot soapy water and dried thoroughly between each use, all will be well. Plastics are by nature sanitary materials -- well, maybe not this type -- and are no more likely to harbor bacteria than other kinds of drinking containers -- coffee mugs, serving pitchers, and drinking glasses included.
This one is entirely up to you. As for me, I think I'll stray from refilling my bottles. Especially after recalling that my four-year-old plunged a chocolate Teddy Graham from his mouth into one of my bottles the other day.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-19-2008 @ 12:54PM
Mike said...
You don't need to worry about the sippy cups if they're hard plastic. The type that leech potentially harmful chemicals into your drink are the soft plastics.
Some good rules of thumb:
-don't heat or freeze the containers (fridge is okay)
-if re-using plastic bottles, wash in cool soapy water
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4-19-2008 @ 12:56PM
Judy said...
We re-use bottles. At home, we drink out of glasses (the boys still use sippy cups, which maybe they shouldn't because of the plastic issues, but they are still prone to dumping water out if they think there is a good reason). So the plastic bottles are for when we need something to take out of the home.
I had a stainless steel bottle, but left it when I visited my mom a year ago and haven't bought another one. I keep thinking of buying Sigg bottles, but for now, I'm just not that stressed about re-using plastic bottles.
And our water jug where we keep cold water in the fridge is an apple cider jug that we've been using for over a year. But we don't drink directly out of that one - we pour from it - so I think it's probably okay.
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