The Montreal Nature museums (Insectarium, Botanical Garden, Biodôme and Planetarium) will stop selling bottled water in their gift stores. It takes more than 47 million gallons of oil to produce plastic water bottles for Americans every year. Eliminating those bottles would be like taking 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. (source: Food and Water Watch)

Plastic water bottles are rarely recycled and often end up in landfill or floating in the vast ocean waste stream killing fish.

Finally, plastic bottles are unhealthy for humans. They leach chemicals into the water that you drink leading to hormone disfunction or even cancer.

Stainless steel water bottles are a solution. The best one I found is made of surgical grade stainless steel, the highest quality available. It also comes in a backpacker-style wide-mouth design that I love. It is big and holds 38oz of liquid.

If you’re worried about the “carbon consequences” from buying a steel bottle, the manufacturer, Guyot Designs, has a program called C-Minus where they offset the carbon emitted from making the bottle. Every bottle they produce carries 100lbs of verified green house gas emissions reductions – making their bottles not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative!

Other highlights:

• Fair labor and fair wages were used in making this product.
• It’s 100% recyclable.
• Dishwasher safe.
• Lifetime warranty.