Raw-Can-Roll-Kitchen

Going Green: Get Rid of Plastic Bottles

by admin on Nov.05, 2009, under Interesting Articles

Taken from brighthub.com

botttles

Using plastic water bottles are both bad for your health and bad for the environment. Here we are going to take a look at what type of bottles are bad to use in general and what type of bottles should never be used at all.

There a quite a few people who buy plastic water/drink bottles and then reuse them over and over again. Reusing the bottles in that fashion is very bad for your health. There are even some plastic bottles that shouldn’t be drunk from straight from the store. Plastic is essentiality a porous material, which means that some of the chemicals leaches out into the liquid it contains. Some chemicals leach more than others but the point being here that any chemical that leaches is going into your body.

Now, you’ll notice that there is a recycling number on the bottom of plastic bottles. Some bottles will have #3 and others will have a #7 and so on. Those numbers signal the different chemicals and therefore the way in which they need to be recycled for easier separating. Some numbers are not too bad in regards to human use, while other numbers should be avoided at all costs.

Number’s 1,2,4 and 5 are considered usable for human consumption products based on being made out of PET/PETE, also known as polyethylene terephthalate. The #1 contains the basic polyethylene terephthalate. The #2 contains a high density polyethylene and the #4 contains low density polyethylene. PET/PETE is a thermoplastic polymer resin that comes from polyester. When PET begins to degrade, it releases Acetaldehyde, which is better known as ethanal.

The #5 contains Polypropylene, which is also known as polypropene/PP. Polypropylene is another thermoplastic polymer with a density rate between that of the high and low density polyethylene’s. PP however, will begin to degrade when exposed to UV light.

All in all, plastic bottles and containers that have number’s 1,2,4 and 5 are the safest to use but you do not want to reuse them. And remember to keep your number 5’s out of the sunlight.

Now, let’s take a look at the plastic numbers that you should avoid at all costs and those are numbers 3, 6 and 7. The #3 plastics are made from Polyvinyl Chloride/PVC, which contains a human endocrine disrupter called di-2-ehtylhexyl phthalate. The #6 plastics are made from Polystyrene/PS, which is another human endocrine disrupter. The #7 plastics are made from Polycarbonate, which leaches out a hormone disrupter called bisphenol-A. Using any of these numbers over a prolonged period as an adult or even beginning consumption of these as a child can actually change and or interfere with the chemical balance in human body.

Remember, that in the standard green three R’s of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle that when it comes to plastics you want Reduce and Recycle not Reuse.


4 Comments for this entry

  • Miranda
    December 13th, 2009 on 1:18 am

    Though I appreciate an article mentioning how bad plastic bottles are for the environment, I notice that you frequently drink bottled water. Personally, I feel an article about how tap water is actually better than bottled water (better regulated) and doesn’t cause all the waste that goes into bottled water would also be a great article. Plastic is also the hardest thing to recycle. I would love to see you using tap water more with your recipes. :)

  • Cory
    December 13th, 2009 on 6:20 am

    Well if you’d like to write an article about that I would love to read it (and if I agreed with it I would post it too). I’m personally not sold on tap water being better for our bodies especially when they put ammonia and chlorine in much of the city water these days not to mention all the heavy metals. When I’m at home I use filtered tap water but on the road….seriously if you could see the crappy dressing rooms they stick us in and the rotted out old arena pipes the water is traveling through I’m not so sure you would drink that water either. Water is a highly debated topic you probably already know. I’m still open to any and all info I get and the best suggestion yet is to carry my own portable filter but until I get something I can trust bottled water is the best alternative for me on the road at this point.

  • Miranda
    December 13th, 2009 on 10:29 pm

    Thanks for the response.
    I understand while traveling you don’t know the situation specific to that area (especially when you’re out of country). A small, portable filter would be awesome (I know REI carries a number of varieties). Unfortunately, a lot of bottled water is far less regulated than tap water (FDA vs EPA), so there is often more harmful things in bottled than tap (unless you know that the brand you drink is regulated better by the company distributing it). This graph shows it well: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/infographic-day-bottle-water-really-bad-yes
    It is definitely a controversial issue and I’m glad that you stress recycling the bottles, which would help if more people did that. What’s really bothersome to me is some people drink bottled water when they live in an area that is known to have great tap water (Duluth, MN, where I grew up, for example).
    I’ll work on an article here soon, though I’m not positive where I would post it… I’ll have to look around some. :)

  • Cory
    December 14th, 2009 on 7:04 pm

    Thanks for the link that was very interesting. I’m going to check out water filters at REI in the next couple of days as I have to go there anyway. More than anything I would like to look into the feasibilty of going greener on these tours and looking into a water program for the buses and dressing rooms on the road.

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