Want to see an innovative way to use all your old water bottles - now that you’ve Taken The Pledge and given them up?!?  Check out this website and see how some guy built a house from them.  Even better, see the chandelier that someone made from 1 liter bottles!  Plastic Bottle House

Rodin's Thinker understands the impact of a small, mindful choice!

Being mindful of our actions is something that I try to impress upon my kids. But it’s not just being mindful about the big things.  Small changes can add up to a huge difference.  If you’ve been buying one case of 1/2 Liter disposables for $6.00 a week, by switching to a reusable water bottle from H2Ox2.com, you would have…

Saved yourself $312.00. (I didn’t add in the 31 cents that the same amount tap water you would have   to pay for!)  If you don’t like your water, that will pay for a $118.00 filter and leave you lots of extra!

Saved 156 liters of oil! It takes 1/4 of a bottles volume in oil to produce it.

Saved at least 624 liters of water! To produce these bottles, estimates are that it takes between 2 and 3 times their volume in water waste.

Made a great choice - to deny our evergrowing landfills of more plastic waste.

Made a great choice to have one less bottle recycled!  While we support recycling, the better choice is to REDUCE!  Remember, they aren’t made into more plastic bottles…why do you think fleece is so cheap?

Think about it…Living a mindful life can be very inspiring.  It doesn’t take a huge change to make a huge difference.

The ecological impact that disposable PET bottles have on our environment is pretty simple and widespread.  The economical impact that giving up the disposables can bring is fantastic.  Did you know that bottled water costs about 1,000 times more than tap water and is not as well regulated.  Don’t like your tap water?  Buy an inexpensive filter.  It doesn’t take too many trips to Costco to stock up on bottled water to pay for a new filter.

For each gallon of water that’s bottled, estimates are that it takes an extra two bottles to process it.  So, it’s wasting money and water.  Top that with the amount of oil it takes to produce and distribute water bottles and you’d use enough to fuel 1 million cars in our country for a year.  Oh, and their production creates of 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Anyway you look at it, it just doesn’t add up.  Convenient and trendy - but certainly not fiscally or environmentally responsible.

Take the Pledge to Break the Bottled Water Habit.

I pledge to Break the Bottled Water Habit by Thinking Outside the Bottle and using a reusable water bottle instead of buying bottled water. I also pledge to support the efforts of local officials to stop spending public funds on bottled water and prioritize strong public water systems over bottled water profits.

Check out the Break the Bottled Habit website for useful tips and information to make your switch to reusable bottles even easier as well as even more reasons to stop buying them. Click here for your link.

Take a few minutes to make yourself heard.  We’ll give you 10% off of the bottle of your choice throughout October if you do Break the Bottle Habit! Just send us a comment and let us know you’ve done it and we’ll send you the coupon code!

Roadside Trash

Each day I take a walk and each day I’m confronted with an endless stream of water bottles, fruit juice bottles, and sports drink bottles littering the sides of the road and along the sidewalks.  The interesting thing about it is that, here in Michigan, I hardly ever see a soda - or, as we say “Pop” - bottle or can on the side of the road.  That’s because we have a 10 cent deposit law that works.  Over 90% of all beverage containers included under this law are returned for a refund.  Is it a royal pain in the neck?  You bet - but the results can be easily measured by the kind of trash we see by the road in Michigan.

According to the Beverage Industry website, sports drink sales were up 19.1% this year over last accounting for over 1.5 BILLION dollars in sales.  Although I’ve been hearing that bottled water sales are flattening, their sales for 2007 were up 6.9% over the year before - that stat is courtesy of Fine Waters - The Water Connoisseur website. (Huh? Yes, it’s for real.)  They also add that pop sales are declining.

So, what do we do?  Here in Michigan, we push for a deposit on ALL drinks - not just carbonated ones.  I would urge anyone not familiar with the success we’ve had with our “Bottle Bill” to read about it and investigate what you can do in your own state.  Check out The Bottle Bill Resource Guide and start taking action.