Your Guide To Green

Why Choose Stainless Steel Bottles Over Plastic?

Eco-Living expert for beYOUmag, online magazine, Michelle Barge, said it best in a March 25, 2008 article titled. “Lose the Plastic Water Bottle — Our Health is Paying for the Convenience.” She concluded, “I’ll take mine in stainless or glass, thank you.”

This choice is up to us and I’d like to share some information to help you make the right choice.

I have a memory of one of my college professors teaching me about what he called ‘prudent avoidance’.  Basically he used to ask us to consider what is prudent and appropriate for us to avoid?  This is a personal choice about what we are willing to accept into our lives and each one of us has our own choices to make.  In essence, this is what I talk about every day when it comes to choosing what level of green will work for each individual.

My biggest concern is for all the children that we are indoctrinating into the plastic lifestyle.  When I was a kid (in the late 60’s and 70’s) plastic was minimal in our culture.  Over the past 40 years plastic has been inserted everywhere and with the way our younger generations are exposed we just don’t know what the long-term effects will be -- yet another reason to avoid them. 

Prudent avoidance really hit home for me as I discovered some very interesting information about plastic and the impact that it has on our lives. I offer more detail below, but for those of you who just want the bullets here goes:

1. Never eat or drink out of a plastic container again.  I know this is a hard one to swallow but we have to make the best effort we can to reduce our interactions with plastic containers.  My goal is, “No more plastic bags or bottles,” knowing that it will be tough to do, but worth the effort.
2. Never put any plastic in the microwave.  We have all done it, we put the Styrofoam or plastic bowl in the microwave and it comes out with the plastic around the edge bubbled.  THAT is the plastic melting into our food and thus we are consuming the chemicals associated with them.
3. Never freeze plastic.  The heat and cold extremes make the plastic in these containers leach into the foods or liquids in the containers.
4. Then there is the history of the container that you are drinking from that you can’t be sure of.  The convenience market across from my office stores its drinks in an outdoor metal walk-in storage container.  I live in Phoenix and it is entirely possible that the temperature inside that storage compartment will reach more than 180 degrees in the summer.  That in itself does a number on the liquids in the containers.  This is just the health concern; I’ll leave the rest up to you on this one.
5. Environmental impacts abound with plastic throughout their entire lifecycle. In my article “Plastic is Forever” I cover a lot about plastics in our environment.   Issues about the production and disposal of plastics create other strong arguments for using stainless steel bottles in lieu of plastics.
6. One additional caveat in the realm of drinking bottles concerns aluminum metal bottles, which often are touted as an environmentally healthy option to plastic bottles. As far back as 1985, Gary Price Todd, M.D. was quoted in Nutrition, Health & Disease saying, "The evidence is strong enough that the prudent person will eliminate all food and cosmetic sources of aluminum.” 

Depending on who you believe, aluminum has been said to contribute to Alzheimer’s, essential tremors and is touted by some to be a powerful neurotoxin.  I have recently dealt with some personal health issues involving heavy metal toxicity, which included aluminum.  Once I addressed the high level of metals in my body the health issue got better.  This once again speaks to the notion of prudent avoidance - I am not sure about aluminum so I will just avoid it.

So what is the solution?

I tell people that the two things that we should be drinking from are glass or stainless steel…Period. 

Glass is not always appropriate, although I often use a mason jar around the house, which leaves stainless steel an increasingly popular option. According to a study by a British research group, there is no indication that the manufacture of stainless steel causes any adverse effects on the health of those involved in its manufacture.  Contrast this with the concerns we’ve discussed about plastic and heavy metal toxicity to the human body and that leaves one choice for me.

When it comes to purchasing stainless steel there also are some things to know -- the biggest of which is that there are many grades of it.  The one that you want is the 304 food grade stainless steel.  In the industry it is also referred to as 18/8, which stands for the amount of chromium (18%) and Nickel (8%) that it contains.  A caveat - people who are allergic to nickel may have a low risk of an allergic skin reaction following direct and prolonged skin contact.

My company, YourGuidetoGreen.com, has paid for lead testing on the stainless steel bottles we sell and they came up clean—free of chemical leaching and toxicity. In addition we thoroughly checked out the U.S. manufacturer of the bottles (New Wave Enviro Products) in order to do our due diligence on the product line. So I am completely comfortable going with this stainless steel option.

A Brief Primer on Life Cycle Analysis

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) refers to the process of evaluating ALL of the impacts of the life of a product and then measuring the financial, environmental and social impact of creating a product.  It is an extensive process and in many ways is still in its infancy with regard to producing consistent results.
Lifecycle is often referred to in two ways, both of which are valid AND very simplified here:

1. Cradle to grave -- an old way of thinking about the process that looks at the entire production, from creation of the materials to producing said item to the burying of it, (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle-to-grave_analysis for more) and
2. Cradle to cradle, which is the new way of relating to the process.  Using this approach, every step along the way is considered until the product is made into something new. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_to_cradle for more)

On Plastics, BPA and Polycarbonate Use in our Culture

According to a variety of research studies, Bisphenol-A (BPA) has been found to leach out of polycarbonate plastic water bottles, when heated in hot water, left in the heat, or frozen.

Depending on who you talk to, BPA is either perfectly safe or a dangerous health risk.  This definitely falls into the category of something for me to prudently avoid.  The plastics industry says it is harmless, but a growing number of scientists are concluding, from animal tests and other studies, that exposure to BPA in the womb raises the risk of certain cancers, hampers fertility, contributes to the onset of type-two diabetes, and could contribute to childhood behavioral problems such as hyperactivity.

According to its critics, BPA mimics naturally occurring estrogen, a hormone that is part of the endocrine system, the body’s finely tuned messaging service. "These hormones control the development of the brain, the reproductive system and many other systems in the developing fetus," says Frederick vom Saal, Ph.D., a developmental biologist at the University of Missouri. “Endocrine-disrupting chemicals can duplicate, block or exaggerate hormonal responses. The most harm is to the unborn or newborn child," vom Saal says.

Where To From Here?

Click here to browse our Stainless Steel and Plastic Guide, for more information on steel, aluminum, and plastic bottles, plus environmental and health issues involving plastic.