Friday, April 4, 2008

Irate with Nalgene... Something I Never Thought I'd Say


For over 5 years now, I have been bringing bottles of water to work and drinking from them throughout the day. Specifically, I bring Nalgene bottles and fill them up with water from my fridge. I use these Nalgene bottles because they are incredibly sturdy, easy to clean, save me tons of money compared to buying bottled water, and help save the environment because I'm not consuming wasteful, plastic bottles everyday. They've been great for me. But now I'm absolutely petrified of them.

Today I read in Consumer Reports a descriptive article pertaining to the potential dangers of B.P.A.-- a type of plastic that is used to make these Nalgene bottles. I can't find this particular article online yet, but the Consumerist ran a helpful piece, as did this blog post which really rings true with me, and this Treehugger.com article echoes this growing concern of mine... and hopefully yours as well.

This society we live in where we perpetually produce new products, and THEN LATER find out they are harmful has got to stop. It's positively scary what we're doing to our Earth and ourselves, and reading an article about a product that was previously considered to be innocuous really disturbs me. Especially when I used one every freaking day of the work week.

The average lay person like myself would never know the difference between a "good" plastic and a "bad" plastic, and now I feel completely used and ignorant because I would never have had any idea about the problem with BPAs had I not read this article. Nalgene has really made me irate.

Sadly, nowhere on their site does Nalgene even attempt to address this issue, which is poor public relations to me. Nor do they make any attempt at offering refunds or exchanges for people who bought these types of bottles. Not only that, there's no humanoid listed that I could even write to, just a department name or a generic email address, both of which will probably wind up in their respective trash bins. But I'll still give them a piece of my mind, and hey, I just griped with the world about my concerns right, so that's a start.

My next thing to do is find a new SAFE water bottle...

3 comments:

ADAM KLEINBERG said...

Check out CamelBak's new BPA-free bottle.

Mike said...

Hey Adam, thanks for your comment. I did see them at REI and will definitely consider them. I'm almost wondering if I should be looking towards stainless steel bottles at this point... I'll be deciding soon! Thanks...

Anonymous said...

You all can rest peacefully now. Nalgene has released a BPA free line of bottles
The TRITAN 32oz.
The TRITAN 24 oz Bike Bottle
The TRITAN 12oz Kids Bottle

For more information go to the web site below

http://www.nalgene-outdoor.com/