Get your special edition Earth Day 2010 Green Bottle™ today!

In 2009 a campaign was launched called “Green Generation™” whose sole purpose was to inform people about green living in their communities and worldwide. What better way to start living green than to stop using plastic water bottles.

Did you know that in the US alone we toss about 60 million plastic water bottles every day? Think of the difference you could make by simple not using plastic water bottles anymore. What if everyone stopped using them? The massive disposal problems we face in our nations landfills would be significantly less, pollution of our lakes and seas would go down and the litter problems across the country would decrease.

So this Earth Day pick up a stainless steel Green Bottle™ and stop buying plastic water bottles. And if still aren’t convinced here are five more great reasons to stop buying plastic water bottles; such as the astronomical costs of buying bottled water versus the water from your tap. 

Looking for other ways to help out this Earth Day? Check out EarthDay.net for events and opportunities in your local community.

If you haven’t heard of Direct Relief, check out their site. 100% of all donations for Haiti are going there, not one cent is being spent on advertising or admin fees. Not one cent.

Lots of charities will take your donations for Haiti but a lot of them siphon off money to put towards commercials, ad campaigns, and over-head fees. But Direct Relief is sending all of it to Haiti. 

Direct Relief has also been sending help to Haiti for years, not just in recent times. For all of these reasons we decided to send our help to them so they can pass it along to those in need in Haiti.

It has always been our business practice to help our local and global communities and organizations. We’ve been supporting charities like the Red Cross, Ronald McDonald House and Honor Flight for years, and now we’d like to help those in need in Haiti through Direct Relief. And you get to help too.  Spread hope for Haiti and get your own Green Bottle™.

Image courtesy of UNDP via Flickr

We’d like to know where our customers take their Green Bottles™. Maybe you take yours camping or on long hikes. Maybe you bring them on a golf outing or to a sports event. Or you might keep them on your desk at work instead of a glass that could easily spill onto your computer. Maybe you have the youth size and your kids tote them around everywhere!

Whatever the case enter our new monthly photo contest by sending us your photos  of your Green Bottles™ in action. If your photo is selected we’ll post it on our front page and send you a free Green Bottle™. You can upload your pictures directly to our site or you can join our Flickr group and add them there.

You can submit as many pictures as you like. Since January is almost up we won’t be selecting a winner until February, which gives you plenty of time to take plenty of pictures!

Enjoy photographing your Green Bottle™!

Here are some of my ideas:

For a friend/co-worker, create a “Go Green” gift basket, complete with a book of tips about green living, reusable cleaning cloths, organic hand soap, recycled paper, reusable shopping tote and of course a Green Bottle!

What domestic goddess wouldn’t love a “Green Cleaning” gift basket? I am biased toward Method products…affordable and they work well. Get a few cleaning products, reusable cloths and sponges and some biodegradable dish soap, put in a gift basket and you have an instant green gift!

For the nature lover, a pass to a national park or forest I’m sure would be much appreciated.

There are many unique, recycled and interesting gifts on www.uncommongoods.com that I’m sure any green gift getter would enjoy.

A bag of fair trade coffee would be a wonderful gift for a coffee lover.

Check out www.kiva.org and give a loan that will change lives. It truly is a gift that keeps on giving.

Another gift idea that is practically free and much appreciated is a gift of services. What are you good at or capable of? Offer to babysit your nieces, cook a meal for a family in need or shovel snow for an elderly family member.

And of course any one of our wonderfully designed Green Bottles would make a great gift for anyone on your list! Please check out our website at www.greenbottleonline.com to see all of the sizes/designs we offer.

Will you be giving any green gifts this year? If so, what will you be giving?

Take care!

-J

On August 19th, 2009, aluminum bottle manufacturers Sigg and Laken acknowledged that bottles manufactured by their company prior to August, 2008 were knowingly lined with an epoxy-resin containing the harmful chemical BPA. At Green Bottle™, we feel stainless steel is a much better option than aluminum for food related consumer goods.

The benefits of a stainless steel bottles far outweighs those of aluminum bottles. While the properties of both metals can be safe for consumer products, aluminum tends to transfer taste and smells when used for liquid storage. Because of this, our competitors use a plastic lining to reduce the absorption of taste and smell from certain liquids. Typically this lining is plastic which may contain chemicals like BPA that have shown to leech into food or liquids.

We would like to take this time to reassure you that every Green Bottle™ is made of 18/8 #304 food grade stainless steel and has ALWAYS been 100% BPA free as clearly stated on all our packaging.

At Green Bottle™, we have always offered full transparency and have marketed our consumer products with honesty and integrity. We have published our quality assurance tests to the public and continue to test our consumer products on a monthly basis due to our high standards.

Many other bottle companies are responding to the news linking Sigg and Laken to BPA by expressing their concern for the consumer and singing the praises of their product. While we also believe our brand is better for the consumer, we’d like to do something more to improve this unfortunate situation. We want to put a stainless steel Green Bottle™ in your hand.

Buy any Green Bottle™ from our Green Bottle™ store as a replacement for your Sigg (or any other aluminum or plastic bottles) and get one Green Bottle™ free. This offer is valid until September 22, 2009 or until we have given away 100,000 Green Bottles. When you place your order, please use Special Offer Code – B1G1.

Imagine you’ve just been given a choice: You have to drink from one of two containers. One container is a cup from your own kitchen, and it contains a product that has passed strict state, federal and local guidelines for cleanliness and quality. Oh, and it’s free. The second container comes from a manufacturing plant somewhere, and its contents—while seemingly identical to your first choice—have not been subjected to the same strict national and local standards. It costs approximately four times more than gasoline. These products both look and taste nearly identical.

Which do you choose?

If you chose beverage A, congratulations: You just saved yourself a whole lot of money, and, perhaps, even contaminants, too. But if you picked beverage B, then you’ll be spending hundreds of unnecessary dollars on bottled water this year. Sure, bottled water is convenient, trendy, and may well be just as pure as what comes out of your tap. But it’s hardly a smart investment for your pocketbook, your body or our planet. Eat This, Not That! decided to take a closer look at what’s behind the pristine images and elegant-sounding names printed on those bottles.

You may actually be drinking tap water.
Case in point: Dasani, a Coca-Cola product. Despite its exotic-sounding name, Dasani is simply purified tap water that’s had minerals added back in. For example, if your Dasani water was bottled at the Coca-Cola Bottling Company in Philadelphia, you’re drinking Philly tap water. But it’s not the only brand of water that relies on city pipes to provide its product. About 25 percent of all bottled water is taken from municipal water sources, including Pepsi’s Aquafina.

Bottled water isn’t always pure.
Scan the labels of the leading brands and you see variations on the words “pure” and “natural” and “pristine” over and over again. And when a Cornell University marketing class studied consumer perceptions of bottled water, they found that people thought it was cleaner, with less bacteria. But that may not actually be true. For example, in a 4-year review that included the testing of 1,000 bottles of water, the Natural Resources Defense Council—one the country’s most ardent environmental crusaders—found that “about 22 percent of the brands we tested contained, in at least one sample, chemical contaminants at levels above strict state health limits.”

It’s not clear where the plastic container ends and the drink begins.
Turns out, when certain plastics are heated at a high temperature, chemicals from the plastics may leach into container’s contents. So there’s been a flurry of speculation recently as to whether the amounts of these chemicals are actually harmful, and whether this is even a concern when it comes to water bottles—which aren’t likely to be placed in boiling water or even a microwave. While the jury is still out on realistic health ramifications, it seems that, yes, small amounts of chemicals from PET water bottles such as antimony—a semi-metal that’s thought to be toxic in large doses—can accumulate the longer bottled water is stored in a hot environment. Which, of course, is probably a good reason to avoid storing bottled water in your garage for six months—or better yet, to just reach for tap instead.

Our country’s high demand for oil isn’t just due to long commutes.
Most water bottles are composed of a plastic called polyethylene terepthalate (PET). Now, to make PET, you need crude oil. Specifically, 17 million barrels of oil are used in the production of PET water bottles ever year, estimate University of Louisville scientists. No wonder the per ounce cost of bottled water rivals that of gasoline. What’s more, 86 percent of 30 billion PET water bottles sold annually are tossed in the trash, instead of being recycled, according to data from the Container Recycling Institute. That’s a lot of waste—waste that will outlive you, your children, and your children’s children. You see, PET bottles take 400 to 1000 years to degrade. Which begs the question: If our current rate of consumption continues, where will we put all of this discarded plastic?

Officially Licensed Collegiate Green Bottles!

Show your school spirit with our great new line of bottles featuring many Colleges and Universities!

The Collegiate bottles should be here in September ’09! Please continue checking this blog for news and updates.

A World of Reasons to Ditch Bottled Water  by Union of Concerned Scientists on 7.9.07 

Bottled water manufacturers’ encourage the perception that their products are purer and safer than tap water. Bottled water can cost up to 10,000 times more per gallon than tap water. But the reality is that tap water is actually held to more stringent quality standards than bottled water, and some brands of bottled water are just tap water in disguise. What’s more, our increasing consumption of bottled water—more than 22 gallons per U.S. citizen in 2004 according to the Earth Policy Institute—fuels an unsustainable industry that takes a heavy toll on the environment.

Approximately 1.5 million barrels of oil—enough to run 100,000 cars for a whole year—are used to make plastic water bottles, while transporting these bottles burns even more oil. The growth in bottled water production has increased water extraction in areas near bottling plants, leading to water shortages that affect nearby consumers and farmers. In addition to the millions of gallons of water used in the plastic-making process, two gallons of water are wasted in the purification process for every gallon that goes into the bottles. Nearly 90 percent of water bottles are not recycled and wind up in landfills where it takes thousands of years for the plastic to decompose.

So the next time you feel thirsty, forgo the bottle and turn to the tap. Because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standards for tap water are more stringent than the Food and Drug Administration’s standards for bottled water, you’ll be drinking water that is just as safe as, or safer than, bottled. If, however, you don’t like the taste of your tap water or are unsure of its quality, you can buy a filter pitcher or install an inexpensive faucet filter to remove trace chemicals and bacteria. If you will be away from home, fill a reusable bottle from your tap and refill it along the way; travel bottles with built-in filters are also available.

All the more reason to use your Green Bottle everyday!

Three great ingredients to have on hand are lemons, baking soda and white vinegar.

Lemons are effective against many household bacteria. Baking soda is a great deodorizer and cleaner and wonderful for making a cleaning paste. Vinegar is a good grease cutter, mildew remover and all purpose cleaner.

-To easily clean your garbage disposal, cut half a lemon into pieces and run them through the disposal. The lemons will clean the disposal and leave your kitchen with a fresh scent!

-You can use household baking soda as a carpet deodorizer. Sprinkle it on your carpet before you vacuum for added freshness.

Do you have any natural cleaning tips you would like to share? Please leave them in the comments section. Thanks!

*Before applying any cleaning solutions, always spot test a small area if possible.

Green Bottle offers you a substantial profit margin. With no up front investment, we will provide you with a customized fundraiser kit that will make your fundraiser truly effortless.

We would be happy to help you set up a fundraiser. Please contact our fundraising department for more information at 1-866-974-6333 or email fundraising@puresimpleproducts.com

-J

*Green tip of the day: Conserve water by turning off your tap while brushing your teeth or shaving. You can save up to 8 gallons of water a day!