All Hail Nalgene! Death to Nalgene!

My last post on bottled water received a number of comments, and with great information. Here are some of the highlights, and a couple of new articles.


Time to Pack In the Polycarbonates
Well, this was a downer for me. Essentially it says that Nalgene bottles, water cooler bottles, and plastic food containers are leaking "a chemical that mimics the hormone estrogen, known as Bisphenol-A (BPA)". From the article:

Effects on men from genderbenders include enlarged breasts and reduced sperm counts. In women, earlier puberty and possible link to breast cancer.

[...]

Pregnant women who consume a chemical found in everyday plastic products such as food containers and water bottles could be putting their unborn children at risk of developing cancer and other diseases when they reach adulthood.

Exposure within the womb to bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used in the production of plastics, caused changes linked with diseases such as obesity, cancer and diabetes...

I have to file this under "everything will give you cancer". Environment = 1, Columbia = -1.

Josh Dorfman, the Lazy Environmentalist

I.M. Bitter sent me this video. If you don't know about the lazy environmentalist, watch a bit of this video. His basic idea is "change my effects, not habits". One example was the new hybrid Camry. Some people just don't want to buy a Prius for any number of reasons. If the number one selling car in America came with a hybrid option, you can change your effects on the environment with no change to your habits (ie. you're buying the car you would have bought anyway.) Bitter mentions Sigg bottles as an alternative to Nalgene (or commercially bottled water) which are mentioned in the video.



Molto Mario Bans Bottled Water
Kitty sends this:

Speaking of, have you heard about Mario Batali's restaurant (among others) banning bottled water? The thought is to save energy on delivering the water, save on recycling, etc. etc. [...] An excoworker's father worked as a New York water tester. Apparently if you filter it, it is more than fine.

I hope more restaurants do the same until it becomes natural. I'm surprised the water people aren't coming back with a backlash...but I guess the water people are less mobilized, have less money and are less evil than the gas and car people.

I mentioned that I heard San Francisco was banning bottled water. I knew I had the finer details missing, so here's some updated info on that.

[Newsweek: link]
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order banning the use of city funds to purchase single-serving plastic water bottles.

Every day there's a new water scare. Forget drinking the water, just trying to keep my head above it is challenging enough.