Ingredients of your containers

A majority of our population would be hard pressed to know someone, or themselves be parents who do not care about their children's health. Parents caring for their children's health is simply instinctual, a component of humans feelings and thought process. This however, can be easily tricked through clever advertising, omitted information, and simply skewed through "scientific study" findings. With all the savvy consumers, many of these things are becoming increasingly uncovered. One of the longest, and most prevalent lingerers however, is the use of plastic bottles.

Plastic bottles, even those that are "BPA free" will still contain harmful chemicals which will be ingested. What exactly is the plastic bottle made from?

"In the United States, plastics are not made from crude oil. They are manufactured from petroleum products, which include liquid petroleum gases (LPG) and natural gas liquids (NGL), and natural gas.  LPG are by-products of petroleum refining and natural gas processing, and NGL are removed from natural gas before it enters transmission pipelines. These fuels are used as feedstocks to make the plastic and as fuels in the manufacturing process".

- U.S energy information administration.

Now THAT sounds natural (sarcasm intended). So why do companies choose to continue using plastic? Plastic is much more expensive to produce than glass, but costs less to ship. This makes them be roughly the same cost to produce and reliever either glass or plastic.

How about glass? What is glass made of?

"The ingredients for making glass are soda ash, sand and limestone. These are mixed together and put in a furnace. The is heated to 1600C and runs continuously".

-Lesswaste.org.uk


So to reiterate ingredients:

Plastic: "petroleum products, which include liquid petroleum gases (LPG) and natural gas liquids (NGL), and natural gas.  LPG are by-products of petroleum refining and natural gas processing, and NGL are removed from natural gas". (Yum)

Glass: soda ash, sand and limestone. (All purely natural in the truest sense of the word). Around 70% of the glass is only sand.

What can consumers do?

Avoid plastic and cans at all costs. Re use small glass containers, or buy a large glass bottle of pre made tea to continue using for water. Other options include buying a glass bottle with a silicone to protect from breakage (more expensive, but very safe for kids as well!).

http://www.lesswaste.org.uk/glass_section.pdf