BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: GUEST,Penny S.
Date: 07 Jul 03 - 11:51 AM

Last spring I drank from was at Malham Cove in Yorkshire. It had a funny metallic taste. Then I went up the valley above, reading the guide about the lead mines. There's more to know about spring water than the bugs in it!

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: Beccy
Date: 07 Jul 03 - 12:03 PM

Jim Dixon- I don't get the crinkly variety of kids straws unless its the disposable type. Playtex makes a kids cup that has a straw that comes in two parts. Both parts are easily cleaned with a paper towel carefully impaled on a bamboo skewer. I'm a fiend about cleaning these things. Three important things to remember. If it isn't water, clean it IMMEDIATELY after usage. Have one especially for water and one for all other beverages. Last, when the straw starts looking sketchy, replace it!!!!

Beccy

P.S. My husband and I use Platypus bottles that we purchased from Campmor catalogue. They're great! You can get them with a wide mouth so they clean more easily, or with the sport bottle type top for kids (but they chew them up pretty quickly.) They collapse completely when empty and they can be boiled, frozen, dishwasher-ed, etc... Plus they have a lifetime warranty.

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: Grab
Date: 07 Jul 03 - 01:35 PM

I think I've found the best guide to this. Buy one bottle, refill it until it smells a little off, then chuck it and get another. No need to sterilise, and it'll last at most a month so no risk from stuff leaching out of the plastic.

I got a bunch of "proper" water-bottles for going walking, but they always go manky and the water smells of plastic. I found that reusing springwater/cola/whatever bottles works a damn sight better and costs you nothing. They're a bit less resilient, but they're still well tough enough that you can drop a rucksack on them and they'll stay intact.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: GMT
Date: 08 Jul 03 - 11:42 AM

I've used the same plastic bottle at work for over a year and I 'aint dead Ye.... (thud).

Cheers
Gary

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: Burke
Date: 08 Jul 03 - 05:52 PM

I now filter my water & pour it into an empty plastic bottle. For recent heat, I've left space at the top & put them in the freezer for ice water.

Plastic is not as impermeable as glass. Don't plastics outgas in the sun as well? I don't drink a lot of soda & can't stand colas. When I could still get colas in glass 6 packs for company, that soda would still be fine over a year later. Now with only plastic or cans, I find one gets consumed & some time later when I open an old one, it's flat & tastes like the container. I think this is what makes an expration date on water make some sense. Someone else has mentioned that the soda bottles also seem to absorb the taste of the soda.

I don't see a problem with refilling & reusing, but long term use for storage, especially if exposed to the sun, may not be a good idea.

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 09 Jul 03 - 02:18 PM

A Newspaper Article today (UK) reports on the state of drinking water in England. There has been a report released by the Drinking Water Inspectorate (official watchdog) saying our drinking water is passing their tests at a high standard. It also says that bottled water is NOT BETTER (not necessarily worse)than what comes out of our taps, but costs about 1,000 times as much.
A Guardian WaterFact sheet - BLICKY.
The newspaper report (whichever paper) mentions that bottled water has a use-by date of 2 years, but could be stood in storage for an indeterminate time before the label is put on, so may be MUCH older.

I reckon if the water in the bottle doesn't absorb anything out of the bottle in two years of residence, putting FRESH water in which stays there less than 24 hours isn't going to shift ANYTHING from the plastic.
QUACK.
Geoff - ex professional water analyst. (good job for a Duck!)

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Jul 03 - 10:25 PM

Harumph! Back during the war...young whippersnappers don't know....

Well, really, back during the Vietnam War the US Army started issuing plastic 1-leter canteens -- they were quieter than the aluminum ones used before, and when a little noise can mean your life, well.... Anyway, I have one from that period. I use it. It works. I don't notice any off flavors to the water unless they were there when I filled it.

The canteens are still issued, along with a two liter model. Out here in high desert country lots of people use two-liter plastic backpack type canteens (Platypus is one such name, Camel another).

I have a suspicion that we're a lot tougher than we give ourselves credit for being. If we weren't the whole damned human race would have died out long ago.

I figure that I'll just keep reusing the plastic bottles until they become so gross I toss 'em.

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 10 Jul 03 - 07:16 PM

Harrruuummmphhhh - whipppersnippers indeed.

During WWII the US Army issued quite a number of plastic canteens (about 1 qt size). Since they were in all the "Army Surplus" stores, quite a lot of Scouts/campers had them from about 1948 on. Neither the plastic nor the "better" aluminum ones were too noisy, since they were all carried in an ill-fitted canvas belt-bag, but the shape was a little inconvenient when you had to carry much other stuff.

Anything you put in one of those yellow plastic canteens came out tasting like you'd carried it around in an old boot - with sweat socks still in place therein.

The style was still in use during the Korean action, although some other (better?) ones had started being issued. Most (surviving) vets learned that any equipment issued needs some judicious taping and tying to get it quiet - it just got a little easier with some of the new-fangled stuff.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 03:53 AM

Found some square cross section plastic (fruit juice) bottles about 1 litre. Round ones don't pack as closely.

Take a cup of salt, add to one litre of water (proportionally) and fill the plastic bottles. To the very top - no air. If you squeeze the sides a little, with experience, you will work out the amount to do.

Place in bottom of Chest type Freezer.

The water will freeze, expanding the bottle slightly perhaps (glass wil shatter!). It will stay cold if the power drops out.

The salt causes the specific heat of the water to be changed so that they will stay frozen longer than plain water.

They work well in Eskys too.

DON'T Try To Drink These! I mark them with a marker pen "SALT"

Plastic softdrink bottles seep gas, losing pressure. But if you like to keep some "flat" lemonade to drink to assist with really bad upset stomachs, if it is 6 so or months old works just fine. (Old Wives Remedy)

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 04:26 AM

that must be why the local county council put tons of salt on the roads during winter then, [so they stay frozen longer]! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: Mooh
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 07:41 AM

My folks refilled the same water bottles for over 20 years at the family cottage without trouble. Some of them started life as undiluted fruit juice containers or vinegar bottles, all of them one gallon or 4 litre in volume. Originally we filled them from a few hundred yards out into Georgian Bay (Great Lakes, Ontario Canada) and tested the water with some kit which the province would provide. Later (and still) we fill them from an artesian well a few miles away. The bottles look pretty funky these days, and some have been replaced with more modern (and less sturdy) ones from various sources. None of these were washed near as often as they should have been until this year when my wife insisted on regular (ie annual?) cleansing. Our well water has so much iron in it that it's almost weldable.

As for the little personal sized ones, we use and re-use the same ones for days on end while camping with no more than rinsing. I have an evil addiction to Diet Coke so I generally re-use those bottles until I loose, crush, or loose faith in the seal. I do the same at work where the tap water is likely no better than camp site water.

While in Prince Edward Island last month we happily re-used the glass bottles everything comes in since plastic doesn't appear to be available. They're heavier, but I like the old time feel and whatever recycling advantages the Island claims.

Since the tap water killed alot of people in Walkerton (about an hour away) bottled water is a major business. I'm gonna give up when we have to use bottled air.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: wysiwyg
Date: 07 Sep 03 - 08:11 AM

The local college where I swim daily has just done me an enormous personal favor. The pool is located in the PE building. In this building, there are 3 floors of classrooms, all the gyms, training rooms, sports locker rooms for home team and visitors.... not to mention all the basketball and volleyball games, and a monthly community kids' event.... At every exit and also right outseide the pool-department entrance, they have added big, deep recycling bins, with one specifically for used water bottles. Of course I will sanitize them before putting them in the rotation. With a few trips up to the excellent mountain-side spring to fill up the 5-gallon containers we have, I should be able to easily and conveniently bottle a long country winter's worth of water before snow arrives, and stow it down cellar to keep nice and cold and clean. Bwahahahahahhhh!!!!!

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: Gurney
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 06:43 AM

just a thought or two...

It only takes one greebly in a bottle to propagate. It takes one night to reach an unacceptable standard in a NZ summer.
There are phthalates in sunblock too. Where do you want your cancer?
Jeri's plan to make slug-traps works for flies, too. Different bait.

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: the lemonade lady
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 06:58 AM

I've heard that polar fleece is made from re-cycled clear plastic lemonade bottles. Is this so?

Sal

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: Sooz
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 01:03 PM

Yes it is true. Many fleece fabrics are made from PET bottles.

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: Mr Happy
Date: 05 Jun 04 - 07:08 AM

At close of Chester Folk Festival this year, my hand maiden & manservant were packing up all Mr Happy's camping stuff.

Handmaiden found that the one gallon plastic springwater container he'd used for many's the long year had a ring of green mildew a quarter the way up it's interior & strongly suggested it be chucked.

Mr Happy acquiesced & is now seeking replacement.

BTW our large water bottle made of thick polythene (ex-GPO) is still in perfect order despite being over 20 years old.

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 05 Jun 04 - 09:48 AM

"New" is not always improved - yesterday I replaced my 26 year old fridge & assume that the new one won't last so long.

sandra (still using the water bottle referred to in my last post of June 2003)

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 05 Jun 04 - 11:16 AM

I argee that new isn't always improved. I have some pairs of knickers that I bought at least 10 years ago and are still intact, if a little lacking in brightness of colour.

I bought some new ones 6 months ago. Guess which ones are in the washing and which ones are in the rubbish bin.....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 05 Jun 04 - 11:40 AM

Now look Liz,

You're not just trying to set me off on another 'panty raid' are you?

It's ok this time - I've taken the tablet for today....

:-)

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: Sooz
Date: 05 Jun 04 - 11:50 AM

The official advice from the Food Standards Agency is that, provided they are well washed and undamaged, it is safe to re-use those PET bottles designed for single use. Its a good job really, as thats what we have been doing!
Not sure if there is any similar advice about underwear, Liz. (I find thatblack keeps its colour best though)

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jun 04 - 12:12 PM

Quite right Sooz. I was involved with 'that' study (or a similar one, Canada) and what we did was analyse the water from bottles kids had with them at school. They had bits of things in them that might well have caused health problems -- anything from yesterday's breadcrumbs to this morning's boogers -- so the warning has to be, as ever, err on the side of best practices. If you want to sterilize plastic bottles give them a good rinse in hot water then add a couple of drops of iodine in half a lite pf tap water, slosh it around, discard, rinse and fill. You'll be just fne. Unless you live in Waterton ;o)

Subject: RE: BS: Re-Using Plastic Springwater Bottles
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jun 04 - 12:14 PM

Walkerton ... I've got water on the brain. (No, not literlally)