We use some bottled water in our home. Mainly for "convenience." It is convenient to throw a bottle of water in the kids lunches and it is convenient to hand them a bottle of water to carry when we go on a hike or when we are walking out the door to jump in the car. However, I do not enjoy the expense of disposable water bottles. It seems like an awful lot of money for water that I could get out of the tap for free. I will only buy cases of water on extreme sale and I must admit (even though everything and everyone advises against it) that I refill water bottles. In fact, I refill them many, many times and I am likely breeding horrible bacteria that my family is ingesting on a semi-regular basis; that's my contention for this year's Mom of the Year Award!
Recently, I have been running low on my supply of water bottles and have been diligently waiting for them to go on sale. It happened, this week, my local grocer was running an 8 hour only sale and had Crystal Geyser water for 2.50 per case. Knowing they would sell quickly, I got there at the very beginning of the sale, elbowed my way through the crowd and loaded up my two cases (the maximum allowed). When I checked out, I was aghast at the 1.20 per case recycling fee I was charged.
I've always been aware of the recycling fee charged in my state, this is California, after all. But I never fully realized that on a 2.50 case of water, I am paying almost an additional 50% toward the recycling fee. I have previously taken these water bottles in for recycling to realize that the return on them is only pennies, not nearly the amount I pay at the check-out. A great thing to do for the environment, but not so great for my wallet.
I've had it! I'm completely fed up by the water bottle conspiracy. We don't need them. They are frivolous, bad for the environment, and the way I've been doing things, potentially very bad for our health as well. Tap water is safe and healthy... don't believe me, check here for a report on the water where you live. There is definitely no reason to support buying a $5 bottle of room temperature water, like I saw for sale in my hotel room this weekend, especially, when the only means of chilling it was to pour it over the tap water ice that the hotel provided. When did so many of us become so immune to this ridiculousness?
It occurred to me that we have forgotten how we survived back in those long forgotten olden days when there was no bottled water. Let me refresh your memory; we used cups, canteens and drinking fountains! I'm adopting a New Old way of doing this water thing in our home. I've moved the stack of kid friendly, dishwasher safe plastic cups down to a level in my kitchen where the kids can reach them. They can get a couple of ice cubes out of the freezer and fill a cup up with tap water. Also, I filled a pitcher with water and keep it in the refrigerator, some of the little kiddos can't reach it, but there is always someone a little taller around to help. I've been eying the new stainless steel, canteen style water bottles for some time and had a little trouble swallowing the $10 price tag that stores were flaunting. Last week I was able to find them at Big Lots (gotta love 'em) for a very frugal $3 each, I picked out four of them and each of the pip-squeaks in our home will find one in their Easter basket at the end of the month (I'm a big fan of giving practical things for gifts, double the bang for the buck).
That's my two cents.