Thrift Week 2019: The Reusable Edition

One of the cornerstones of the ecofrugal life is replacing single-use items with reusable ones. For folks who care about both the environment and their bank balance, this is generally a no-brainer. After all, what kind of sense does it make to keep spending money on things you're just going to discard? And why flood the waste stream with disposable napkins, tissues, whatever, when you could just buy one thing and use it over and over again?

Some time last year, I got the idea to write a post about all the different ways we've put this principle into practice in our own lives. I started making a list of disposable things we've replaced with reusable ones, and when I got to seven items, I thought, hey, wait a minute—why not give each one of these its own post for Thrift Week?

Thus, I'm dubbing Thrift Week 2019 the Reusable Edition. Each day this week, I'll be focusing on  a specific disposable item we no longer use (or never did use) and what reusable item we've replaced it with. And since we're starting off Thrift Week on a Thursday, which is Morris dance practice night for me and Brian, I thought I'd make my first post about an item that always accompanies me to my dance practices and gigs: my reusable water bottle.

As I've said many times, both here and on Money Crashers, I think the whole concept of bottled water is about as far from ecofrugal as it's possible to get. I mean, think about it for a minute: you're taking something that anyone can get out of a faucet for practically nothing, and instead putting it into single-use plastic bottles and charging a buck or two apiece for them. How on earth did this idea ever catch on? I can see why you might be forced to buy your water in bottles if you live in one of the few places in this country that doesn't have a safe drinking water supply, but how did it ever become the standard across the entire country, to the point that drinking from the tap never even occurs to people?

Now, I realize there are some people who regularly drink tap water at home but buy bottles to take with them on the go, since you can't exactly tote the kitchen sink along with you. Well, it's true, if you want water ready to hand when you're out and about, you need to bring your own bottle—but there's no earthly reason why that bottle needs to be disposable. The kit bag I tote along to every Morris practice contains a stainless-steel water bottle I acquired on Freecycle, which holds—I just checked—a good 28 ounces. It has a twist-on top with a pop-up drinking valve, and an additional guard that fits over that valve to catch any leaks. In the few years I've had it, it's developed a few scratches and dings, but it holds water just a securely as ever. Most of the time, I don't even bother to clean it, and I've never noticed any kind of crud growing in it—but if I did, a good rinsing and air drying would leave it as good as new.

I chose this large, sturdy bottle for my Morris bag because it sees a lot of heavy use, and I wanted something that would both hold a good supply of water and stand up to being hauled around and buffeted in my kit bag. However, we also have a couple of others that see regular use. We regularly keep two glass bottles in our car cup holders that originally held juice; I believe one was originally a Snapple and one was a Nantucket Nectar. Spending two bucks on a bottle of juice may not seem very ecofrugal, but if you look at it as a reusable water bottle that comes with a free serving of juice as a bonus, it's actually a great price. All we had to do was drink the juice, take the bottles home and give them a quick wash with a bottle brush (originally bought for our reusable milk bottles, back when we were regularly drinking powdered milk), and refill them with water. In the wintertime, we make a point of never filling them more than about two-thirds full, lest they freeze and crack the glass, but in the summer we can fill them right to the top. We take them inside for rinsing and airing every now and then, but otherwise they need no care.

Even when we want bubbles in our water, we no longer buy it in disposable containers. My Primo Flavorstation, which I received as a gift four years ago, is still working fine and can supply all our fizzy-water needs. When I first got this, it came with a warning that the plastic bottle supplied with it shouldn't be used for more than two years, because the PETE plastic in it would slowly degrade until it could no longer handle high pressure, resulting in a dramatic explosion. So I bought a second bottle for it just in case, but I've been tempting fate by continuing to use the original bottle for the past two years, and so far it's still holding up. (I did start turning the machine to face away from me before hitting the carbonator button, just so that in case it does suddenly go off with a bang, I'll have the machine between my body and any flying plastic fragments.)

So, basically, for the last four years, we have had no need to buy any form of water in a disposable bottle, and we hope not to need any for the foreseeable future. I suppose some day both the bottles for my Primo will give up the ghost and I'll have to find some other solution, but maybe by that time someone will have come up with a creative solution that will allow me to use the machine with some other type of bottle. (Maybe something along the lines of this 3D-printed adapter someone made for the SodaStream.) Or maybe I'll have to trade in the Primo for a SodaStream with an adapter that allows it to be used with a standard, refillable CO2 tank.