As I mentioned in a previous post, my major New Year’s goal is to limit some of the excess food packaging that comes into my house.

My foolproof super hopeful plan!

As noted, I’ve failed to reach my goal for four years or so. I’m pretty sure that I’ve been aiming too high, which is exactly the opposite of what I always tell other people to do. For example, I want to eliminate ALL unnecessary food packaging. Yet, obviously I’m not nearly reaching that goal. I always tell you, my readers, to take small steps towards a greener lifestyle, so this year, I’m taking my own advice.

In 2012, my household will be concentrating on some smaller, hopefully more achievable steps towards an overall less package-laden lifestyle. Here’s what I’ve come up with.

Baby steps for my goal this year!

Who will be involved:

Since I live with four other people for the time being, a true elimination of household packaging would require the entire household’s cooperation. That spells potential trouble and extra stress I don’t need. That said, I’m limiting my goal to what I can control – meaning packaging concerning my son Cedar and myself.

The basic plan:

1) I sat down and thought about all the foods we buy prepackaged.

2) First I eliminated impossible items from my list. For example, I’m not buying an organic cow, milking it and churning flipping butter and ice cream. I’m also not raising chickens. Meaning, we’ll keep buying items such as organic milk, eggs and butter prepackaged.

3) Then I thought about the stuff I could manage easily because I’ve already got the skills – i.e. I can bake cookies and muffins vs. buying packaging. I can also buy rice and beans in bulk and cook them vs. purchasing cans or boxes.

4) Then, because a goal should be at least a little bit challenging, I considered something harder. For us, the food items with the biggest package impact would likely be soup. We eat soup for most lunches and often for dinner too. We eat organic veggie, chicken noodle, veggie chili, tomato and more. I have almost zero soup making skills. I’ve tried to make soup before. At best I’ve had curious results and at worst really terrible results. If I can learn to make decent soup, it would be a BIG deal, save on lots of cans and a great accomplishment.

My chosen small steps:

• Quit buying rice and beans in cans, bags or boxes. Both are easy to get organic in bulk, but take more time to cook.

• Don’t buy potatoes or carrots in bags anymore. Can you believe I sometimes do this! Anyhow, I can cut up bulk carrots myself and lately I’ve located bulk organic potatoes not in bags.

• Bake cookies and muffins from scratch from now on, using bulk ingredients. Easy because I’m a good baker and since I work at home, baking is something I do have time for – i.e. it’s easy to walk away from the oven, so long as you set a timer.

• Learn to make soup. This will be the hardest part for me. One reader suggested a crock-pot, which I’ll be looking into, and I’m going to gather up some organic soup recipes.

How is 2012 going so far?

Well, not great, but luckily it’s only the 8th. I bought bulk carrots and potatoes this week, plus didn’t buy any muffin mixes or prepackaged cookies.

I’ve utterly failed to research soup making yet and I bought two boxes of rice and two cans of soup. Blah. So, it’s going about half good. Stay tuned, because hopefully I’ll manage to look up some soup recipes and share them here.

Image by Johnkarun via sxc.

Instead of general New Year’s goals, I’m concentrating on discussing the childhood obesity epidemic. That said I do still have two general goals for myself, or I should say my household. One of my goals is to get this household more active, since we’ve been slacking, but we’ll discuss that later. First, let’s look at my big goal of the year.

The ongoing food packaging goal

For over four years, my New Year’s goal has been to eliminate food packaging that comes into my house. I’ve done a horrid job too. Seriously, I’ve been terrible, not really limiting much food packaging at all. Each year I think, this is the year I do better and each year –  zero results.

For example, if you look in my cupboards and fridge, here are some typical items we buy that come in packages of some sort:  ketchup, crackers, soup, bread, frozen veggies, milk, refried beans, eggs, granola bars, butter, baking goods (I often, but don’t always buy bulk), sometimes cookies, tortillas, spaghetti sauce, cheese, bagels, rice and so on and so on. We do buy 90% of our food in organic form. However, for a green family, I feel like we have way too much overly packaged stuff.

What’s stupid, is that half this stuff I can make from scratch, using bulk goods brought home in reusable bulk bags or containers (which I already own). I’m a good bread and cookie baker. I can make crackers and granola. I’m decent at making sauces and there’s no question that I can get organic veggies fresh in reusable bags vs. frozen.

Why we fail year-after-year

Being that I make this flipping goal every year, I needed to figure out how come my household keeps failing to meet it.

We’re busy: I feel like we’re pressed for time constantly. We’ve got three kids with three different school and activity schedules. My boyfriend works an oddball shift full-time at his day job and performs frequently with his band (second job). I work full-time+ writing and I’m on the board at my son’s school. Like we’ve got time to bake and cook from scratch every night. It’s REALLY easy to open cans of soup.

I’m ill-equipped: I’m a decent cook, but not a genius cook. Stuff like homemade soup is a stretch for me. In fact, I’d say that soup is our biggest failure. We get canned soup often. Even though we buy organic, it’s still packaged and the cans are known to harbor BPA (lame).

My partner is ill-equipped: I’m not the only adult in the house with issues. My boyfriend doesn’t seem super keen to cook from scratch either and his cooking abilities are also limited.

Picky kids: My boyfriend’s kids want processed foods often (turkey dogs, bagels, mac n cheese, etc) and my son, Cedar, is so picky that once we find something he’ll eat, we tend to stick to it, rather than try anything new. For example, Cedar just recently decided mac n cheese is okay to eat, but says, “I like the Annie’s white shells and not other mac n cheese.” Thus, whipping together a homemade dish of mac n cheese could mean a picky kid food revolt.

Benefits of eliminating some packaging

If we manage this goal this year, there are some major benefit though. For example:

• Lower grocery costs. There was a time, years ago, when I used to buy more food in bulk and cook from scratch more often, and I did spend less on groceries. Packaging and convenience does cost you, especially if you buy mostly organic.

• We’ll learn some new skills, like how to make soup.

• We can teach one, two or maybe all three of the kids to cook too.

• We’ll avoid pesky BPA in cans.

• We’ll avoid cluttering up the landfills with trash – not all packaging is easily recycled. Plus, although we do recycle like champs, recycling takes energy, so why not avoid the packaging in the first place.

• We’ll be more self-sufficient and less dependent on food companies. For example, I get cranky when my favorite organic vegetable soup is out of stock. It would be better to learn to make it myself.

• We can feel better about our footprint. It’s not just all the packaging to recycle that bugs me. It takes energy and other resources to make food packaging. Plus, we’re not a family that buys a bunch of useless junk (most of us are not excess stuff fans) so the fact that we buy too much packaging just feels icky to me.

Since I haven’t reached this goal in previous years, I decided to lay out a much better plan this year. That plan is coming up soon. For now, tell me if you have any green New Year’s goals for 2012.

Image by raja4u via sxc.

A few years ago I saw a television program (on PBS I believe) that highlighted the green efforts of some fella who had been reusing the same disposable plastic water bottle for about one year. His intentions were good. I mean, obviously you shouldn’t buy bottled water over and over. However, in actuality reusing disposable plastic water bottles is not a very healthy.

Back in 2009, a piece from a local PDX news site features this idea of reusing a disposable plastic water bottle over and over and the advice came down hard on the side of don’t do it. An expert from the The Oregon Environmental Council noted that there are two major reasons why you should not reuse disposable single use water bottles – bacteria and polyethylene terephthalate.

Plastic disposable water bottles are also very tough to clean properly (all those weird ridges and a small opening).  Experts say you shouldn’t put disposable water bottles in the dishwasher, because heat releases chemicals used in the plastic making process, and your hand obviously can’t fit inside one, so bacteria growth and chemicals are likely problems.

Because disposable water bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate, which degrades over time, eventually, the bottle will leach phthalates into your clean drinking water. Phthalates can disrupt your hormones and the expert from the The Oregon Environmental Council further notes that phthalates have been linked to various health problems, “Including women giving birth to boys with small genitalia and undescended testes.”

It won’t kill you (of course) if you reuse a plastic water bottle once or twice, but with so many better, reusable water bottle choices out there, why would you? Plus, ditching disposable water bottles can save you a whopping $6,000 over 5 years. Listed below are some non-toxic, BPA-free, reusable water bottle options…

• BPA-free reusable water bottles for kids
• Reusable water bottles for adults

Today is Blog Action Day 2011. This year’s topic is food. In America, people have a huge addiction to take-out food, which creates quite a trash issue.  Paper or plastic bags, wrapped plastic silverware, straws, paper cups, plastic or Styrofoam containers and more trash, makes take-out food, not so very eco-friendly. Plus, most of this trash is not easy to recycle and this stuff is not going to decompose. It’ll just sit and sit in the landfill.

The best thing to do is cut back on fast food and take-out. Seriously, I know people who eat take-out or fast food every single day (no joke). In fact, I know people who give fast food to their kids every single day (yikes). Not only does this create large amounts of trash, but most of the time, take-out and fast food is terribly unhealthy, which in turn equals negative health problems and consumer issues. Not to mention, almost zero take-out is organic. So cutting back is seriously helpful for the planet and your own health.

That said, I’d be insane to assume I can get people to quit eating fast food and other take-out altogether, so there are some other things you can do to lower your take out foot-print.

• Take your own reusable bag, cardboard box lid, or even a reusable lunch bag and have the food establishment put your food in it vs. a plastic or paper bag. This will work better if you skip the drive through or call ahead. If you go through a drive through, you’re going to have a hard time convincing the restaurant to skip the disposables.

• With the above in mind, skip the drive through. Get out of your car and go inside. Don’t sit for 20 minutes idling in a line of cars.

• Take your own food containers. Some restaurants won’t fill your reusable containers due to health regulations or general restaurant policy, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. To-Go Ware makes many creative options for hot and cold food storage that would work well for take out, such as their To-Go Ware 3 Tier Stainless Steel Food Carrier.

• Skip the drink in total. There is no reason to get a drink, in a paper or Styrofoam cup, plus the lid and straw, when I know you’ve got drinks at home.

• Just say no to utensils and paper napkins. Since you’re going home, use your own silverware and cloth napkins vs. disposables.

• Forget the extras. Tiny little packets of ketchup, other sauces, salt, pepper and butter add up to a whole lot of trash. If you’ve got condiments at home, use them.

• Talk to your fave take out place about going more green with their take out packaging. The Green Restaurant Association has a handy go green suggestion letter you can give to your favorite take-out place.

How do you keep your take out green?

+ Blog Action Day 2010 – Water

For a while now I’ve been pondering the eco pros and cons of real books vs. Kindle – or any other wireless reading device, mainly because a few months ago I was slightly considering getting a reader. I read really fast and it’s a hassle to carry around enough books to sustain how quickly I read. Also, my son Cedar has been interested in possibly getting a reader.

I’m not on board with adding more electronics to our world, seeing as how we’re already over-saturated. However, on a technical eco-scale, I’m just not sure which is the better choice – a digital reader or real books. That said, I thought we should take a look at the pros and cons of each, starting with real live paper books:

Photo ©Lusi via sxc.

CONS OF REAL BOOKS:

• Although more publishing companies are using recycled content paper, the vast majority of books are still printed on virgin paper – HUGE waste of trees, water and other resources.

• Books that are thrown away will languish in the landfill for a good long while. Biodegradability, even of paper, is highly overrated.

• Entire books usually cannot be recycled with your other paper recycling, due to the glue in the binding.

• According to Eco-Libris, more than 30 million trees are cut down every year to produce the books sold in the U.S. alone.

• Books take up an insane amount of space, which is not eco-friendly. The more stuff you have, the more space you need. Books are likely my main space hog -I’ve got many bookshelves full of books.

• According to Green Press Initiative, the newspaper and book publishing industries together consume 153 billion gallons of water annually – it take seven gallons of water to produce a paper printed book, while digital books can be made with less than two cups of water (not counting the actual reader).

• It’s a pain to move when you have a bunch of books. On an eco-level, you need more truck space and more boxes to move a huge collection.

• Brand new books are expensive – another reason to buy used but not necessarily a reason to buy digitally.

• Only 5%-10% of recycled paper is used by the book publishing industry and the carbon footprint of the typical book is 8.85 lbs, in carbon dioxide terms.

PROS OF REAL BOOKS:

• Books have history and that lovely book scent. There’s nothing like owning a book that’s been passed down through generations. For example, I have a seriously old copy of Little Women. It’s awesome, because the first owners parents wrote a message to their daughter in it back in 1935. I always imagine all the people who must have read and enjoyed this particular copy during different time periods – which is fun.

• Books can be shared and have a high reuse rate. You can swap, sell, share or donate your used books. You could theoretically, rip out the pages and recycle them, before tossing a super old book in the trash.

• Paper has a low recycling rate – lower than it should be anyhow, but electronics have a MUCH lower recycling rate.

• While in the past it’s been difficult to recycle an entire book, you can turn a book into something new.

• Books can be very expensive new, but you can almost always find used books for incredible deals.

• Bookstores offer jobs to people.

E-waste has been on mind lately, mainly because I’ve been debating the issue of real books vs. digital readers. Since e-waste is a large part of the digital reader vs. book debate, we’ll should look at e-waste before we look at the pros and cons of digital readers vs. real paper-filled books.

Photo ©dreamjay via sxc.

What is e-waste?

E-waste is technology waste, comprised of waste created by cell phones, laptops, monitors, iPhones, e-readers and other electronics. Sadly, e-waste is considered to be one of the fastest growing waste issues in the United States and other countries.

What is eCycling?

Just like it sounds, eCycling is the recycling of electronics. As of right now, there are few significantly useful eCycling programs in place. Recycling electronics poses its own set of problems and some of this so called recycling actually involves shipping electronics away from the United States – not recycling them at all.

Some crazy facts about electronics in America:

Photo ©rolve via sxc.

According to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) electronics are a booming business. Various statistics from CEA back this up, for example, they note:

• The consumer electronics industry was expected to exceed revenues of $174.9 billion in the United States last year and that’s a growing number. By then end of this year, CEA estimates electronic sales to be at an all-time high of more than $182 billion.
• During the holiday season 80% of consumers will purchase new electronics.
• American families own approximately 24 electronic products per household.

E-waste is bad for the planet: Our planet cannot sustain the huge amounts of e-waste each year, not in a healthy manner anyhow. E-waste includes plastics (and PVCs), chromium, lead, mercury, and other nasty items that can be dangerous for the earth. Cell phone, for example, seem small, but according to Earth 911, “Their exterior coatings are often made of lead, and their lithium-ion batteries can explode if exposed to high temperatures or direct sunlight, which are common conditions in landfills.” Toxic substances found in electronics can seep into the soil and air.

E-waste is bad for humans: Once electronics are tossed into landfills, the toxic substances found within them can leech out and exposure causes health problems for humans, such as lung cancer, brain swelling, muscle weakness, damage to the heart, liver and spleen, severe hormonal disorders and many more issues. According to Earth 911, recent studies out of the Zhejiang University in China shows that pollution from the processing of e-waste can cause DNA damage, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Earth 911 also points out that there are more than 30,000 full-time workers in the U.S.  working in the electronic recycling industry – and they’re exposed to the same health risks.

Improper e-waste is not private or safe: Improper recycling of e-waste allows your private information into the public. Once you enter info into a cell phone or hard drive, it’s there for anyone to access. Proper recycling techniques help keep your personal information private, tossing something into the trash does not.

Migrant child from Hunan province sits atop one of countless piles of unrecyclable computer waste imported from around the world. Guiyu, China. December 2001. ©2006 Basel Action Network (BAN)

A lot of e-waste recycling is totally unethical: Here in the U.S. we often deal with our problems by shafting them off on someone else. Many recycling programs and human minds in the USA are basically working on an, “Out of sight, out of mind” mentality vs. actual recycling mentality. The Basel Action Network (BAN) is an organization focused on confronting the global environmental injustice and economic inefficiency of toxic trade – meaning, they don’t think it’s okay to pass out toxic trash off to other countries. You should be appalled with the practice of dumping electronics as well – it’s one of the worst solutions to a problem ever. BAN estimates that maybe as much as 80% of U.S e-waste ends up on foreign shores.

Coming up we’ll be looking more into ethical electronic recycling, digital books vs. paper books and much more.

The New York Times has a very interesting piece up, Cold-Water Detergents Get a Cold Shoulder. It’s worth a solid read, but to sum up, it appears that laundry washing folks all over the world can’t get over their addiction to hot water washing.

The piece notes that U.S. customers are stuck on hot water washing big time, refusing to use cold water, even though laundry soap manufacturers have been making, and selling cold-water detergent for years. The U.S. isn’t the only problem though. As the Times notes, “Even in Germany, where consumers tend to be more environmentally attuned than in the United States, manufacturers have discovered that cold-water washing is such a hard sell that they have relegated claims about it — and the attendant green benefits — to the fine print, choosing to emphasize other attributes.”

Not cool. Washing in hot water is an easy habit to break and offers multiple green benefits.

• First of all, the Times notes that cold water washing can save on energy use and help reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions we’re living with.  In fact, the piece notes that, “About three-quarters of the energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions from washing a load of laundry come from heating the water.“

• Secondly, washing on cold reduces waste. Clothes and other textiles don’t stand up to hot water washes well. Hot water reduces the lifespan of your clothes, can shrink stuff and fades colors.

Beyond saving energy and resources, cold water washing saves you cash. It costs a lot to heat laundry water – especially if you’ve got kids and are washing almost daily. The Times piece points out that expert studies show that cold water detergents work just as well as traditional detergents when it comes to getting clothes and other fabrics clean.

New American Dream notes the following:

• By doing 4 out of 5 loads in cold water you’ll cut 72 pounds of CO2 emissions this month alone.
• Keep washing 80% of the loads in cold for a year and you’ll save more than $60 in energy costs for the year ($100 a year if you live in regions with high electricity costs).

We’ve discussed this here before too. Hot water is so overrated. For years and years, I’ve washed clothes, reusable cleaning towels, reusable baby wipes and everything else in cold water + eco-friendly laundry detergent with zero issues. We’re not sick more than other families I know, and everything gets clean, smells just fine and holds up well. This isn’t just me talking either, science says cold water works.

Back in college, when I was in Microbiology for health sciences, we ran multiple experiments with germs, grime and water. It wasn’t the hot water that killed icky stuff. The biggest difference was from length of agitation (i.e. scrubbing time) and type of soap. Also, keep in mind that science says that unless hot water is too hot to touch, no way will it sanitize. I’ve touched the hot water coming from my washing machine before and it certainly didn’t burn me. It’s just not that hot. If it’s not that hot, it’s not sanitizing, it’s just wasting energy and your money.

Honestly, I think that the whole hot water deal is an old school safety net that makes people feel better and cleaner, but again, you need really hot water to sanitize and most washing machines simply don’t heat up so much. Washing on cold, even if you’re washing icky cloth diapers is safe and cleansing. Green Baby Guide has an excellent piece up about washing cloth diapers on cold.

You can make a difference by bucking up and washing on cold. At the very least, you can give it a whirl and see how it works for you.

Do you wash your laundry on cold or hot? How come?

Image ©foobean01 via sxc.

]]> http://www.growingagreenfamily.com/easy-green-step-break-addiction-hot-water-laundry/feed/ 14 http://www.growingagreenfamily.com/usagain-clothing-home-goods-life/ http://www.growingagreenfamily.com/usagain-clothing-home-goods-life/#comments Sat, 17 Sep 2011 22:46:31 +0000 Jennifer Chait http://www.growingagreenfamily.com/?p=8847

I just recently heard of USAgain, a green company that collects used clothes and resells them worldwide. If you’ve just gone through last year’s school clothes, USAgain is the perfect way to hand off the too small everything.

USAgain sets up clothing drop-off bins across the country where you can easily stop and drop off no longer needed clothes and shoes. In total, there are more than 10,000 drop-off locations around the country, so there’s a kick-butt chance that there’s a bin near you. You can search for the closest bin using the search form at USAgain or contact them them with questions.

USAgain accepts clothes, shoes and household textiles of good quality, that are ready to be re-worn and reused. Household textiles include tablecloths, towels, bedding, blankets, bedspreads, etc. They DO NOT accept goods like mattresses, furniture, appliances, carpet, household items, toys or trash.

USAgain benefits your community in three major ways – for people, planet and profit. For people, they help contribute well-being by providing new clothes or used new clothes for folks in need, along with jobs. For the planet, they keep clothes out of the landfills and help conserve resources needed to trash or make new goods. Because the company is a for profit company, they’re helping to grow a more sustainable green industry, contributing to the local and state economy by paying salaries and taxes, and purchasing goods and services from other local businesses.

If you’d like to get involved, you can…

• Sponsor a collection bin on your property.
• Organize a collection drive at your school.
• Volunteer to help sort and distribute donations to local people in need.

On my post the other day about insulated lunch bags, reader Sabrina left an interesting comment. She said, “I have a concern about all of these products using PET. Doesn’t it contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals?” She then referred me to a link at Healthy Child Healthy World that digs into the issue of whether or not PET bottles are releasing endocrine disruptors.

The research on how PET may leach various phthalates is in the early stages and is inconclusive, but that’s beside the point. What Sabrina actually got me thinking about is safety vs. green living, and how they don’t always go hand-in-hand.

Sometimes better safety and green living co-exist easily. Take green cleaning products. Not only is it safer to make homemade cleaners because you cut out chemicals that can hurt your kids, but it’s eco-friendly as well. Homemade green cleaners are green because they cut down on massive amounts of packaging and don’t release harmful toxins into our air, soil or water.

Not everything is so cut and dry though. For example…

Child car seats are basically big hunks of plastic. Plastic, as we all know, is made with non-renewable oil. Additionally, I’ve never seen even one car seat (as of yet)  made with organic fabrics and few are made with child-safe dyes. Car seats are about as opposite of eco-friendly as you can get. Yet, obviously car seats are 100% safer than tying your baby down with a nice recycled box and some organic hemp rope – know what I mean?

Or take the lunch bag situation I mention above. Plastic coated lunch bags, vinyl, recycled plastic and other materials may contain more chemicals than an old fashioned organic cotton lunch sack, making them less green. But on the flip side, if you’re talking safety, organic cotton is a horrid insulator. Even with an ice pack melting all over your organic bag, you’re going to run into food safety issues, because clearly the bag lacks insulation.

We could even bring ice pop molds into the mix. You’ve got silicone molds, which I’m a fan of, but some people think aren’t safe. Or you could go with plastic molds, that may contain chemicals, but they will massively reduce your household waste over packaged ice pops. Do you go with the plastic ice pop molds to avoid waste or say to heck with it and buy the packaged ice pops?

I’ve owned lots of items that aren’t eco-friendly, but that are necessary. For example, my son’s two car seats, child safety products like door latches and non-eco-friendly band-aids (because good luck finding the greener kind at your local store). We’ve owned bike helmets and non-organic sports safety gear (like pads and such) and non-eco backpacks because the less eco one fit my son better.

Overall, it can be a little bit of a mess if you live in today’s world and you’re striving to be safe and green. You can’t always choose both.

What to do? 

I can only speak for myself, but I try not to dwell too much on what I’m doing wrong in the world of green. That’s a recipe for mental anguish that I don’t need. If we need something for safety reasons, and it’s not available in an eco-friendly version, I’ll still bring it into my house if it’s necessary.

Sometimes I feel guilty sure, but then I remind myself that we haven’t brought a grocery store plastic bag or roll of paper towels into this house in years and years. We always use reusable water bottles and we drink plain old tap water vs. using bottled or a plastic, non-recyclable filter. We don’t buy a bunch of consumer junk we don’t need and we  buy used before new when we can. We use green cleaners and PVC-free shower curtains and glass dishes over plastic. I don’t have the greenest car on the market, but I did get the most efficient I could and I keep driving to a minimum. If we can’t afford the greenest sunscreen – well, we do the best we can.

It’s the green actions you DO manage that make the biggest impact. Little things add up. In the end, I want safe and I want green. If I can only have safety, I deal with it and hopefully make green amends in another area of my world.

What do you think? Is it hard to choose between safe vs. green at times? Tell me in the comments and take the poll below…

]]> http://www.growingagreenfamily.com/greenliving-vs-safety/feed/ 1 http://www.growingagreenfamily.com/the-problem-with-owning-a-good-water-bottle/ http://www.growingagreenfamily.com/the-problem-with-owning-a-good-water-bottle/#comments Sat, 21 May 2011 21:20:41 +0000 Jennifer Chait http://www.growingagreenfamily.com/?p=7859

Is that you don’t always notice the best new (and super cool) reusable water bottles as they arrive on the scene.

Take, for instance, the Klean Kanteen Reflect Stainless Steel Water Bottle with Bamboo Cap. BEAUTIFUL! This is for sure my new wish list bottle.

The Reflect bottle actually came out last November. I’ve been happily using my Lifefactory Beverage Bottle for a while though, and since I wasn’t looking for bottles, I missed the Reflect debut. I hear that this bottle sold out super speed fast after it came out, and no wonder, because it’s gorgeous and contains ZERO plastic parts!

• See my Klean Kanteen Classic Water Bottle review.

The Reflect is made with three simple materials; sustainably harvested bamboo, food-grade silicone and stainless steel. The logo is etched right onto the bottle, which, in my opinion, is an awesome and attractive feature. Water bottles that flake paint are so lame.

• Reflect is available in two finishes - Brushed and Mirror

   

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• The Stainless Unibody Bamboo Cap is made from a single piece of stainless steel and bamboo

   

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• Stainless Unibody Bamboo Cap

   

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• Logo is laser etched onto the bottle, replacing paint, so it won't scratch away.

   

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I love the brushed stainless bottle, but it does also come in a shiny mirror option as well. The only people I can think of who won’t like this bottle are folks who don’t like the feel of stainless steel on their lips. Also, it appears that you have to hand wash the bamboo lid. Still, this looks like an amazing addition to the Klean Kanteen family. I cannot wait to get one.

Links for this bottle:

• Buy the Klean Kanteen Reflect
• Klean Kanteen website

More about water bottles in general:

• How to make the switch to reusable water bottles
• Ten BPA-free reusable water bottles for adults
• Ten cool BPA-free reusable water bottles for kids
• Reusable water bottles can save you $6,000 a year

What do you think of the Klean Kanteen Reflect?