Go Bottleless!

Use a Water Filter to Bottle Your Water. It Reduces Plastic, Saves Money and the Planet

The Path to Clean Water may also indirectly be a path to a cleaner planet. By going Bottleless instead of buying plastic water bottles, you can greatly reduce the amount of plastic ending up in landfills. 

My first thought when I think about the problem with plastic waste is to stop littering, stop burying the plastic in landfills, and promote more reuse. But on second thought, there’s a better option than those. That is, wherever possible, to not use plastic in the first place. 

Since most of our website visitors are from the USA and either rely on tap water provided by a Public or Private Water Source such as a water well, one way to reduce plastic waste would be to stop buying water in plastic bottles. If you want the convenience and quality of most bottled purified waters, then the solution may be to go “Bottleless” and make “bottled water” at home.

Quick Facts

1. In 2022, 15.9 billion gallons of bottled water were sold in the United States.  Based on a USA population of over 334,955,000, this would be equivalent to approximately one 16-ounce or two 8-ounce water bottles per person per day. 

2. Approximately 36% of all plastic produced is used to create packaging, 85% of which ends up in landfills.

3. Of the 40 million tons of plastic waste generated in the USA in 2021, only 5% to 6% — or about two million tons — was recycled.

4. About 98% of single-use plastic products are made from fossil fuels.

5. Every hour, 2.5 million plastic bottles are thrown away in the USA.

6. The biggest contributor of plastic pollution is NOT the USA. China, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Thailand are the top 6 polluters and the biggest industry source is not water bottles or straws, but the industrial fishing industry. (“The single biggest single source of plastic choking out the life in our oceans is made up of purposefully or accidentally lost, discarded, or abandoned fishing nets, ropes, FADs (fish aggregating devices), long lines, and plastic fishing crates and baskets.” Source)

Why Go Bottleless?

• Reduce Single-Use Plastic Waste: It has been recommended that we drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day.  If the water came out of an 8 oz plastic purified water bottle, this would account for 2,912 plastic bottles per year per human. We are not meeting this objective and we are actually using the equivalent of 760 8-ounce plastic bottles per human per year.  Let’s make it a goal to meet our hydration needs, but use and waste less plastic. 

• Increase Longevity of Landfills: The combination of reduced production demand and recycling should help to increase available landfill space and reduce the cost of trash disposal.  We need to stop burying plastics and figure out ways to reuse and recycle them.

• Reduce Fossil Fuel Usage:  If we are not using fossil fuels to produce plastic bottles, this high-energy resource can be used for other more important activities and demands. 

• Save Money:  Purified water bought in bottles costs about 2 to 4 cents per ounce or $2.50 to $5.00 per gallon.  Most tap water costs about $2 to $6 a cubic meter (m3), but 1 m3 is 264 gallons or 0.008 to 0.02 dollars per gallon. 

A basic point-of-use treatment system with replacement filters costs about $200.00 and treats up to 6000 gallons of water at a cost of only $0.03 per gallon. So your maximum cost for the equivalent of purified water created at home is only 5 cents per gallon (bottled at home) versus $5.00 per gallon (buying bottled water).   

• No Need for a Delivery or Pick Up:  There is no need to load bottled water into your cart at the grocery store, have jugs delivered to your home, and no need to waste storage space; you can store filtered water for up to 72 hours in your refrigerator.

• No Water Jugs: There is no need for jugs of water at your home, home delivery of water, and no need to worry about lifting or storing these jugs and no need to be concerned about plasticizers leaching from the plastic water bottle or jug if you use a reusable aluminum (USA Made) or stainless steel or glass container for the water. 

• Tap Water can be Better or the Equivalent Quality as Bottled Water: Now some bottled spring water has a very low total dissolved solids and is of very pristine quality, but most bottled water and bottled hydration products are not “Spring Water.”

Most of the commercially bottled water products are purified water.  In other words, bottled water companies are filtering tap water and charging you a premium for this filtered tap water.  I am recommending you remove the middle man and you created the same “filtered and purified” tap water at home and save yourself some money and help to reduce plastic waste.

Definition: Purified water is water that has been mechanically filtered or processed to remove impurities and make it suitable for use. In most cases, the water after this process has no taste or tastes very bad and many suppliers will then add Calcium Chloride and Magnesium Sulfate or other flavors to the water to make it taste ok.  

Most quality counter-mounted, cooler, or under-the-counter water treatment systems can make better quality water than most purified water and can further reduce your exposure to microplastics, BPA, PFOS, and other trace contaminants in bottled water.

• Customize Your H2O:  I like my drinking water with a little lemon and lime with ice. I use lime and lemon juice, but my daughter likes to use actual lemons. On very hot days I like my water with oranges and aloe pulp. 

• My Ice is Now Treated Water:  I installed an inline filter for my refrigerator and now I can create good quality ice and cold tap water that has been filtered to remove the disinfection by-products, metals, and other contaminants.

• Options: Some cooler systems have ultrafiltration options that filter out particles of 0.02 microns and also have features that can heat the water to make tea and other warm beverages. You might also want to consider a “Glass Water Bottle.”

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Customized Pretreatment Systems 

Hydroviv Under Sink Water Filter

Counter Treatment System

Aquasana Clean Water Machine With Dispenser, Drinking Water Filter, Black

Water Cooler Type Fill Systems 

Crystal Quest TURBO Ultrafiltration Bottleless Water Cooler

Counter Top Unit 

Crystal Quest TURBO Countertop Bottleless Water Cooler hot button

Ultrafiltration and Reverse Osmosis with a Heating Option 

SHARP Ultrafiltration + Reverse Osmosis Bottleless Water Cooler

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The Path to Clean Water starts with facts and the first step. Get the facts and take the first step that works for you and your family.   

We also suggest you review our Blog Post on Plastic Waste and you may want to watch Seaspiracy on Netflix