Reduce use of plastic water bottles - bring your own

This is just a simple suggestion. Something easy to do. The small effort equates the small benefit. Please don't let this start a big debate or rant.

As most of us who have gone on guided fishing trips have experienced, water is an important issue. Unfortunately, the simplest way for most locales to provide safe, portable water is to provide water in 8 oz single use plastic bottles. But many places also have a source of safe drinking water at the lodge or on the live aboard. So I and most of the usual crew I fish with bring our own refillable water bottles. I bring my old Nalgene bottles and fill them each night before dinner. If there is a fridge, I ask to put them in the fridge to chill. I use them for water at dinner to brush my teeth that evening and in the morning and at breakfast. Then I top them off and bring them on the skiff. I estimate I probably avoid using 8 - 12 plastic bottles a day (that's in tropical locations like the Amazon or Bahamas). Over the course of a week, that's around 50 - 80 plastic bottles just for me. If my group consists of 6 people, that's approximately 300 - 500 bottles a week. Those bottles aren't tossed overboard but in most remote locations they are burned or simply crushed and landfilled. Not ideal no matter how you look at it.

We also encourage the lodge or skiff owners to bring refillable gallon jugs rather than the individual serving plastic bottles. We don't make a big deal out of it, we just point out the above estimate and how easy it is to reduce the number of plastic bottles. When the conversation is right, we also bring up the idea that the lodge owner might consider having refillable water containers (Nalgene or any of the hundreds of others) made up with the lodge logo and include them in the cost of the trip. It is then recommended that each person fill their water bottle and bring it each day on the skiff, etc. The client then takes the bottle home with them as a souvenir. I don't know how much a pallet of plastic water bottles costs versus the cost of Nalgene bottles for a season. But if the economics don't work, I think most fly fishers would be more than happy to bring a refillable water bottle with them if the lodge or skiff owner requested it. I'm sure there are some who expect the entire trip to be catered and their every demand provided for...but they would be a small irritating minority.

Thanks for this post.I'm mindful of using plastic every day as a general rule and it hurts when you go to somewhere like C.I.for a couple of weeks and again come to terms with being allowed three or four bottles of water per day,plus more if you want them....and there's no way around it as this place (and every other third world destination for that matter) consume all their water out of plastic bottles because their own water isn't drinkable.I bring my own aluminium thermos,but the water still comes from Hawaii or Fiji.It sucks.

If you will notice, all of us fly fishers recycle all our plastics and we do not litter our countryside........facts.

A recent study said that 95% of the World's plastic in the oceans come from rivers in Third World countries.

I do believe we should all be using reusable containers but the fly fishing community is very small.


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Micro-plastic pollution in our oceans scares me but it is not us that are the major contributors:

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...sticx+polution

I wouldn’t be so sure about us not being major contributors. Wealthy nations such as the USA actually contribute the most per capita, and generate a very large amount overall. I believe the numbers you are hearing about the developing nations being the larger contributors has to due with the fact that we do a much better job of containment in landfills (which is still an issue), and recycling. A key issue that skews these numbers is that China is no longer buying our recycled plastic. Recycling in general has its problems and limitations too, though we still do re-use and recycle all we can. Jeff is right that it’s much better to reduce in the first place.
Here are two interesting bits on recycling:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsan...doesnt-want-it

https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/...and-recycling/

Yeah, not everywhere has a supply of potable water that you can use to refill reusable bottles. Kiritibati is a good example. I don't know if there is a water treating facility on the entire atoll. It's all rain collection cisterns with simple screens for filters. But many places do have a source of safe drinking water. Campeche Mexico for example has an excellent water treating system which includes chlorination and fluoridation. Most live aboards have reverse osmosis water treating systems. Some may not be big enough to allow everyone in a large group to refill drinking bottles twice a day. All I am suggesting is that people ask the question and when applicable, bring a refillable drinking container rather than using those 8 oz water bottles. Walk around most cities and airports where safe drinking water is readily available and look at how many people are still carrying one of those 8 oz bottles. Plus they paid over a dollar for that water. That's more than they paid for the gasoline it took to get there.

Re Kiritimati,they have desalination plants but the result isn't really drinkable,and as any tank water is questionable you have to be content to drink the imported bottled water out of plastic bottles.The Lodges are also careful to only use the bottled water for Ice.What's really criminal in Australia is that we have created a society that has a huge demand for bottled water,some of it even imported from places like Brazil,,when our tap water is some of the best on the planet.Insane.It seems that many people (mostly women...sorry) going to Yoga,the movies or simply driving a car are all sipping bottled water.It's actually a fashion statement.I despair for humanity,I really do...

This is getting off on a little bit of a tangent. I think the 8oz bottle thing is more of a convenience issue than anything. People get thirsty, they don't trust drinking fountains or there isn't one within sight, so they simply buy a bottle of water. Or they want to be able to bring the water with them. I hate to talk about a problem without simultaneously bringing possible solutions to the table. These collapsible drink containers are one really convenient option. They pack down into a very small unit, they seal completely 100% leak tight, have a flip open drink spout, and are very light weight. Not big enough for a hot day out on a skiff but certainly very applicable to the day-to-day person out running errands or going to the movies or traveling through airports (fill it up after you pass through security).

https://hydawaybottle.com/

California needs to stand up and ban water in plastic bottles or put a dollar tax per bottle?

What do you think?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bill Kiene semi-retired

California needs to stand up and ban water in plastic bottles or put a dollar tax per bottle?

What do you think?

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Sorry for getting this "conservation" issue under the "Travel" folder Bill. Move it if you want to. But I tend to agree with you when it comes to "convenience / luxury / non-essential" items. Those things are the right place to use money as the driver - either to continue using it or to drive people to stop using it. Especially things that end up requiring public services (ie. tax dollars) to handle, like picking up and disposing of plastic bottles.

it starts with each one of us.

Thanks for the reminder.