Appropriate Technology: The Lowly Reusable Water Bottle (and Daiso)

Tonight's Appropriate Technology post is brought to you by the lowly water bottle.

I'm going to make two assumptions before we start: 1) your dependence on the Card survival option is not such that you just go around buying fresh disposable water bottles wherever you go, and 2) you're in an urban area, as getting water in rural settings (i.e. not from a municipal water system) is a whole different ballgame.

The recyclable plastic water bottle can be reused for a day or two, but is a pain to clean even with the right equipment, can absorb odors and should probably be discarded everyday or two.

A reusable water bottle can be reused indefinitely if cleaned properly. I personally find that scrubbing once a day and washing with soap and hot water once a week is more than adequate. Your mileage will vary. Your choice of materials will vary: various plastics, metal, glass, etc. (So an option if you need to be cheap is a glass bottle with a reusable lid, such as an iced coffee bottle.)

The chain stores will cheerfully sell you a water bottle for prices ranging from larcenous to outright obscene. But you can do better. Your town has a secondhand store, a thrift shop or a dollar store ... and any of these can provide a water bottle with any desired characteristics. You will want to wash your bottle in any case, from any source.

I will mention Daiso for those who are on the West Coast, but especially the San Francisco Bay Area. Daiso is a Japanese dollar store carrying Chinese products made and labeled for the Japanese market, at the standard cost of $1.50 each. Of course this includes water bottles. Daiso carries a very wide array of cleaning brushes for any bottle you care to name, and tiny brushes specifically for cleaning reusable straws.

I have found for myself that the lowly baby bottle brush is the best deal for cleaning water bottles at an American dollar store.

Either can sell you detergent if you need it.

The last step is to get frequent access to a tap to get drinking water, and less frequent access to a sink to wash your bottle.

The world is now full of soda machines. One variant of soda machine is a standing upright console with a touch screen that offers over a hundred different Coca Cola(TM) products. And also Water, labeled as such.

On more conventional soda machines, there is a small white lever, sometimes labeled sometimes not, that dispenses water. (Once in a while, there are two white levers. The other one dispenses unflavored soda water.)

I encourage caution when using restroom sinks to wash and fill bottles. This is a common cause of cross contamination, unfortunately with fecal matter. Wash the faucet and the handles, wash your hands, wash the brush, wash the bottle with hot water, rinse the bottle with cold, wash the brush and put it away. Wash your hands again. Then if you can, find somewhere else to fill the bottle. If you can't, do what you need to do. If you pay attention to where you put your hands and bottle and brush, it's perfectly safe.

The corporate world is full of break rooms, where sinks and water filters and water dispensers and microwaves abound. If you have a cold water tap, a microwave, and a microwave safe container such as a ceramic mug or small microwave safe plastic bowl or cup, you have hot water shortly.

The lowly gas station and convenience store often have a small hand sink in the customer area. Be discreet and buy something, but that's an option in an unfamiliar area.

Santa Clara County, in a rare rush of brains to the head, is encouraging the public installation of not just drinking fountains but water bottle fillers. These hybrid machines are most commonly found in gyms, but in Santa Clara County are becoming standard in public buildings such as government offices and libraries, but can also be found in many public parks.

There is a next to last resort: to buy water from a vending machine. Note that they sell water in 1 gallon increments, sometimes for coins, sometimes for dollar bills, and occasionally in a grocery store with any payment method the register accepts. I'd suggest buying a disposable 1 gallon water bottle and refilling that as needed, for less than a week or so.

I won't get into survival situations, except to point out that recycled water (usually labeled as such), water that has sat in garden hoses, and such should not be trusted for drinking. Also, the use of needlenose pliers or a faucet wrench to open a locked water hydrant can be considered theft, and is properly considered as a survival strategy when the choice is between that and literal dehydration.

I hope these tips and tricks are useful. Do you have any you'd like to share?