My search for an alternative to buying bottled water

Plastic Water BottlesAt least one of the primary goals of Turntotap.com is to help people become conscious consumers. If we begin to understand the effects of our purchasing decisions, then we can start to seriously look at alternative behaviors that will be less damaging to our natural world and to ourselves. People drink bottled water not just because they have been heavily marketed on its benefits, but because bottled water generally tastes good, is very convenient, satisfying a basic human need at what appears to be a reasonable price. So if we want people to think about changing their behaviors, we have to be able to recommend viable alternatives. When I first started looking for alternatives to bottled water for myself, I quickly learned about the re-usable bottles made from a plastic called Lexan. These bottles are used by many people, are relatively inexpensive, are light weight and can be used for other liquids too. So I thought that it would be relatively a simple choice to make. Then I started reading further and learned - without very much research at all - that there are serious questions about the safety of Lexan polycarbonate plastic - I found many articles and studies about this issue: "According to several recent studies, polycarbonate plastic readily leaches a chemical called bisphenol-A (BPA) into foods and liquids that are stored in containers made from it. BPA has been identified as an endocrine disrupting chemical, or a chemical that easily mimics hormones when absorbed by the human body. In the case of BPA, the hormone being mimicked is estrogen. Exposure to this compound at the wrong time can cause a cell division problem called aneuploidy in which chromosomes do not evenly split as a cell divides, leaving the two resulting cells with more or fewer chromosomes than normal. This uneven distribution of genetic material can in turn lead to cancer, miscarriage, and birth defects that include Down‚s Syndrome." (Labour Environmental Alliance Society, 1203-207 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC Canada V6B 1H7) So this takes what would have been (for me) a viable alternative to bottled water and made the problem to solve much more difficult. If we want to come up with a viable re-usable container, we either have to find a plastic bottle that is non-reactive, safe, hopefully manufactured from recycled material, or we will need to look for other types of containers.