What’s your take on aluminum water bottles?

Those aluminum water bottles have spread like wildfire.  At first they were just on TV, then the high-end stores and now I’m seeing them in Walmart and grocery stores.  Some of the bottles are relatively inexpensive while others are way over-priced.  Shop around. 

Aluminum is aluminum, but not all of them are the same.  Pay attention to how wide the mouth is.  Some of them are very narrow so you won’t be able to stick ice cubes into them.

Reduce – Reuse – Recycle

• They can be made out of recycled aluminum.
• They, themselves, can be recycled.
• They can be reused.

It’s that last one, reused, that gives me the heebee jeebees.  You see…well, actually, that’s the problem…you can see into them and that creates a sanitation problem.

In an ideal world you would wash them after each use, but you know that doesn’t happen.  Just from looking at my own habits of reusing plastic water bottles, when I empty one I just refill it and throw it back into the fridge or put it back on the night stand. 

People do more than put water into them like juices, then just rinse them out and use them again.  After awhile mold begins to form inside.  They need to be washed with hot water, soap, and a bottle brush just like a baby bottle.  Even so, you still can see into them to make sure you got it all. 

I think it’s kind of creepy.  It’s like eating chicken thighs in the dark.  You can’t find and pick out all those snappy veins and that’s just gross.

Just the other day I cleaned out the fridge, something that happens only once every 6 years or so.  Ok, I lied.  I only cleaned off one shelf.  I had a pitcher of herbal tea I had made over a month ago and never finished.  No sugar or anything in it, just water and brewed tea.  When I poured it out it had mold in it.  I could see it and I could wash it out, but you can’t see what’s inside those metal bottles.

You fill up a bottle with water, go do your thing, come home and throw it back into the fridge.  Then say you don’t use it again for several weeks.  Is there mold inside by the time you do use it? 

Aluminum water bottles are a great idea, but you have to use them with some common sense.  Yes, I’m lazy about certain things and I’m not the only one.

I think we’re going to have a new bacteria on our hands and I’ve got dibbs on naming it…A1W1B1.