I ADORE Q.I., the British TV quiz show, so occasionally hold my nose and dive into the sewer that is Twitter, in order to retrieve the pearls that are the tweets from the QI Elves. Today’s was that the expiration date on a water bottle isn’t for the contents, but the bottle itself! Now I’m curious…is the problem leaching, or leaking? I have experienced leaks from unopened gallons of spring water that are a few years old, but never from individual sized water or soda bottles, which are thicker, firmer plastic. I routinely reuse these, often for many years.
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Somewhere I read about those individual sized water bottles leaching, and the recommendation is not to reuse them. But I don’t have any details beyond that nor do I know how sound the recommendation is.
Individual bottle are usually made of 1 polyethylene terephthalate. I have heard of leaching into olive oil (the Costco brand olive oil with the same plastic container), though I don’t know if leaching is accelerated by fat.
The plastic can degrade, especially with exposure to uv light, making it brittle.
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I believe that… there’s been enough controversial/potentially scary info out there about plastics that i keep and reuse glass jars and use a reusable water bottle. I also didn’t love the idea of the plastic bottles going through my dishwasher.
Probably a good idea to recycle old bottles you have that aren’t labeled as BPA free.
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Uv light destroys nearly anything eventually…it doesn’t necessarily render it toxic. Having said that, we don’t buy cases of bottled water, and have never reused plastic bottles (90 degree temps with moisture become Petri dishes). We use our beloved stainless tumblers (Yeti knockoffs) for everything (they’re the best coffee mug ever).
I’m kinda proud that the recycle bin is always more full than the rubbish.
UV can be your friend…I bought a beautiful old lace tablecloth last week, and the sun has rendered it snowy white this week, without having to use harsh chemicals that could harm the old fabric. I used to do the same with stained baby clothes.
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