Steripenmandu

As you know I love our steri pen for saving me, as it does, from polluting remote villages and pristine landscapes with dirty mineral water bottles. I got mine from E bay but if you are in Katmandu you can buy them from.

KEEP …. map and address here

(You can also buy sterilized water to fill your own water bottle here at 10 Nepalese rupees a liter)

Or

Mount Everest Equipment Store UP School Road Tamel.

Weenie Water Bottles

Reusable water bottles for little hands – get them young – get them here.

As promoted by the baby center who have a write up on why this is a good idea.

Plastic free water in Leh

Originally uploaded by Ajay Tallam

Those of you who find yourselves in Leh, that’s Leh, Lahdahk, India, might want to know about Dzomsa. This shop refills your water bottle with boiled filtered water there by cutting out the plastic nasties. And if ever a place was cursed with plastic rubbish its Leh.

They have shops on Old Fort Road and Main Street and maybe one more (though they are not all open out of season). Refills cost 7 rupees so its a bargain.

They also do dried apricots in paper bags.

Think Globally Drink Locally

Well Pam has long thought the bottled water is nothing more than a cheesy swizz but these guys put it so much better.

From potty girls blog  

Join me and break the bottled water habit! Getting rid of bottled water is a win-win! You save money and water and help lessen the amount of plastic in landfills! You can now even win a trip to Glacier National Park.
click here to learn more about the campaign 

We Want Tap a group dedicated to promoting tap water over bottled water. Visit their website for lots of easy to digest facts and figures.  
As they say Think Globally Drink Locally      

April Update – drink tap water – its free

Mineral waters are not guarenteed to be purer then tap water – that all depends on what kind of materials the water has flowed through on its way to the bottling plant

In Great Britain the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management recently published a report questioning the quality, labeling, and environmental cost of bottled water.”Branding and bottling of water where there already exists a wholesome and safe supply of … drinking water cannot be seen as a sustainable use of natural resources,” said Nick Reeves, the institution’s executive director.

He says the perception that the bottled product is purer than tap water is unfounded.

“For example,” he said, “the high mineral content of some bottled waters makes them unsuitable for feeding babies and young children.”

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/02/0224_060224_bottled_water_2.htm

Some mineral water is actually nothing more than purified tap water. For example “Marwin UK Ltd., based in a Manchester industrial estate, markets a bottled water called Purefect 95. This comes straight out of a tap from the Manchester main water supply and is then purified further by the company”.
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/bottle.html

Money for old rope

Even if the water is “better”, research keeps on questioning the safety of plastic bottles – the Daily Mail had this to say on the subject “The tests found traces of antimony, a chemical used in the making of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, used by most mineral-water sellers. Small doses of antimony can make you feel ill and depressed. Larger quantities can cause violent vomiting and even death. The study stressed that amounts of antimony were well below official recommended levels. But it also discovered that the levels almost doubled when the bottles were stored for three months.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/dietfitness.html?in_article_id=379624&in_page_id=1798&in_page_id=1798&expand=true

“ At an average of 95p per litre,(bottled water) it costs as much as petrol, while the average cost of tap water in the UK is £1 per 1,0000 litres”

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment

“Nearly a quarter of all bottled water crosses national borders to reach consumers,” Arnold said.
The report gives the example of one company in Helsinki, Finland, that in 2004 shipped 1.4 million bottles of Finnish tap water to Saudi Arabia—2,700 miles (4,300 kilometers) away.
Well-known French brands Evian and Volvic export between 50 and 60 percent of their water to destinations across the globe.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/02/0224_060224_bottled_water_2.htm

Most reports – except those commissioned by bottled water companies seem to agree that municpal water is as good if not better than bottled water. It is certainly a lot cheaper.

Even  “ more than two billion litres of bottled water fly off shop shelves every year and sales are growing at nearly 9 per cent a year – one of the highest growth areas in retail. At an average of 95p per litre, it costs as much as petrol, while the average cost of tap water in the UK is £1 per 1,0000 litres” Indeprandant

 Reading that made it easy to turn to tap water. So all year I have been filling my  Siggs stainless steel  trekkers bottle and, as more reports about the silliness of buying bottled water have come out, looked increasingly smug. 

More reading
salon have a really good and clear article on this subject