Drinking is healthy – even from plastic bottles?
No matter where I am, whether at a friend's house or out and about, shopping, on the train: When I take my water bottle out of my bag to take a sip of water, many people look at it more than once. I have to say, this rather small bottle gets a lot of attention. It often leads to conversations about how important drinking is, that we all drink too little or don't drink "the right things" (coffee, tea, juice and cola are also liquids, but they don't necessarily replace water). And the topic of reusable water bottles with their advantages for us and our environment is no longer an unknown field. Nevertheless, I keep hearing why I "lugging around" a glass bottle with me. "Isn't the bottle too heavy for you? Doesn't it break more quickly? Then you always have luggage with you..."
Drinking water is good – but does it matter what we drink from?
The questions are of course completely justified. And yes, it is practical to be able to buy a bottle on the go and then throw it away again. But what is often forgotten is that single-use plastic bottles are so harmful to the environment that in some places, mountains of plastic waste are growing larger than we could have imagined. Our waste simply ends up on the earth and in our water. And when I talk about water, I don't just mean the oceans and seas in which tons of plastic float. I also mean the water in our drinking bottles. Can that still be a good thing?
What’s in single-use plastic bottles?
If you want to find out what water from plastic bottles is all about, you don't have to search for long. You just need to enter a few keywords like water and plastic bottles into the online search engines and you will get a whole series of articles from specialist journals to online magazines and blogs. Even if the results vary, they all come to one conclusion: water from plastic bottles contains microplastics - that is, plastic in such a small form that we cannot see it with the naked eye. This is because single-use plastic bottles are usually made of PET (polyethylene terephthalate). Tiny substances dissolve from this plastic and end up in the water.
So is water from plastic bottles dangerous for our health?
A few years ago, the first results of studies were made public that found hormonally active substances in water from plastic bottles. Whether the cause lies in the plastic bottles, the bottling process or the water source itself remains an open question, although some data suggest that, alongside other possibilities, the plastic bottle is the main cause. And finally, it is also controversial what effects the substances found in the water have on our bodies. The fact is that hormonally active substances can be found in bottled water, albeit in small quantities. So what does that mean for us?
Drink from refillable bottles
For these reasons, I always "luggage" my glass bottle around with me whenever possible. The amount of substances found in the water is so small that it is not harmful to health. But I still have a bad taste in my mouth. Apart from that, the environmental impact of plastic bottles remains high enough. That is precisely why I don't mind carrying a bit of weight around with me every day. I am also not afraid that the bottle might break. But above all, I know what I have with me and what it is made of. And I don't think a bit of attention for my beautiful drinking bottle is a bad thing either :-)
