Green Options

New BioGreen water bottles are biodegradable, recyclable and reusable.

It is getting hard to keep track of all the containers you should and shouldn’t be eating and drinking out of, let alone what happens to the stuff when it gets thrown away or recycled. While the latest claims about stainless steel water bottles being generally better for you than plastic ones (some more dubious than others) are generally spot-on, you can’t squeeze stainless, and sometimes, you just gotta squeeze.

Filling that niche is a new BioGreen water bottles made by California Springs Water Bottles.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always fantasized about having an algae bioreactor in my backyard. Instructables recently posted a video to help me do just that. The DIY algae photo-bioreactor is built from plastic water bottles, and churns out some beautiful green biofuel.

Motorola has announced plans to launch the world’s first completely carbon neutral mobile phone, at CES 2009 in Las Vegas.

The shell of the W233 Renew is made entirely of recycled water bottles, and will be available via T-Mobile within the next three months. The struggling cell phone manufacturer has also teamed up with CarbonFund.org to offset the energy used in the manufacture, distribution and operation of each phone throughout its lifetime.

I loathe plastic water bottles, but for some reason many otherwise rational people seem to love them. Fortunately, a company called Brandimage may save the day and reduce plastic waste with their paper bottle.

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s posts are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

A number of clients and readers have asked us about ideas for eco-friendly customer gifts and I wanted to write a couple of posts talking about items that have done well in the past for clients or that are new for this year and doing well so far.

I also wanted to break these articles into categories so this blog will cover PET (yes items made from recycled water bottles for the holidays). PET may be a boring material but it is being used in some neat products.

1) Eco 100% Recycled Owl Laptop Sleeve - Made from 100% post-consumer recycled material (product label affirms this claim), holding a standard 15″ laptop and with a very clean line design, these bags have been very popular as both employee and customer gifts. At about $15 including a one color imprint of your logo or message, these bags are very popular with hip eco companies and road warriors. The gift is also practical, for one thing it makes accessing your laptop at the airport a heck of a lot easier, and of course it does provide basic protection from bumps, nicks and

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

Everyone knows that the plastic bottles for packaged water are bad for the environment and bad for your health. The promotional items industry knew this as well and seized on this to promote the reusable plastic bottles ubiquitous in gyms and office promotions.

Water bottles became big business for us. Then came the Bisphenol A scare.

Overnight plastic bottles were out. If you are in the business of promotions and brand management it really did not matter if the plastic water bottle your client had purchased in the past was made with Bisphenol A or not. All water bottles got painted with the same brush.

So what happened?

Well basically overnight, and industry wide, the plastic water bottle orders became steel or aluminum water bottle orders. And then - due to the rush, the tragic earthquake in China which was one of the main manufacturing areas for these items, and basic distribution issues - the aluminum water bottles sold out.

Surprise, surprise the weather turned gorgeous this past weekend here in our Nations capital and I enjoyed the sun outside at a few choice locations. Usually one to bring along my own water bottle when venturing outdoors, I forgot. Inevitably I got thirsty in the hot sun and needed to quench it. So, I did the one thing that I really hate to do and bought a bottled water.

I know. I know. We actually all know the reasons not to do this. But my thirst won out and I was left with a happy sigh and an empty bottle.

To give myself a little bit of redemption, I gladly toted the empty bottle around for the rest of the day with all intentions for bringing it home, destined for the recycle bin. On my return home, I instead left it on my desk and contemplated the water bottle’s next life as a possible craft.

Editor’s note: We’re big fans of SIGG water bottles here at GO… I even bought them for the whole family for stocking stuffers last Christmas. Joel at Life Goggles provided some great details about these eco-friendly bottles last week. This post was originally published on Thursday, February 21, 2008. (Disclosure: SIGG has advertised on the GO Media network)

The reduction in the use of plastic bottles in our lives is an aim I think most of us share. It’s all too easy to pick up a new plastic bottle of water rather than carrying your own, over 100m in the US alone are ending up in landfills every day. There are a few schools of thought, using aluminum bottles, steel bottles or corn based biodegradable plastic bottles (with or without a water filter). This review looks at one of those choices, a SIGG aluminum water bottle.

It’s an aluminum bottle. That’s pretty much it, it carries about 1 litre of liquid and does a fine job of it. At about 22.5cm (9 inches) in height, not including the cap (more about them in a minute) it’s a decent size to use on a walk, picnic, or gym, and just about fits in an average car cup holder. The bottles are fully recyclable at the end of their, probably long, life.

Who are SIGG? SIGG Switzerland dates back to 1908 when metal processing specialist Ferdinand Sigg established an aluminum product factory about 30 kilometers outside of Zurich. Still manufactured in Switzerland, they’ve been called the world’s toughest water bottles. Available in 144 designs with 22 bottle lids, some of the bottles are also displayed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. SIGG is also a member of 1% For The Planet - donating 1% of all sales to helping to preserve our environment.