1 Mother 2 Another

As many of you know, I’ve got Green
tendencies – I lean towards the whole recycle, earth-friendly
momma movement. A couple years ago I tried to empty the house of
plastic water bottles, partly from a “rid the world of those
mounds of single-use water bottles” point of view, and partly
from a “rid my house of BPA” point of view. So I went
out and bought several Sigg water bottles – the metal,
reusable bottles that come in a variety of sizes and are dishwasher
safe and BPA-free.


Except that they’re not.

After years of denying it, Sigg finally
admitted that their proprietary lining does, indeed, contain BPA, a
chemical making the news with lots of leading scientists calling
for a ban on it due to its cancer-causing and hormone-disrupting
tendencies. But Sigg claims that the BPA does not leach into the
water, though it’s never been tested to the diluted level
deemed safe for human consumption.


I’m condensing all of this terribly – if you’re
interested more in the science and argument, please click href="http://healthychild.org/blog/comments/the_sigg_storm_-_confessions_of_a_bpa_user/"
target="_blank">HERE and read more.


But whether or not the BPA does leach into the water in a Sigg
bottle, Sigg now admits that it’s been using the BPA, and in
a stunning move of goodwill, has offered to replace all the old
bottles with existing ones. At no charge. Doesn’t sound like
a big deal, but Avent certainly didn’t make any such offer
two years ago when the baby industry unilaterally stopped using BPA
in all baby bottles; I had to throw away my entire supply and
replace them at great cost.


So this is a big deal to me – a company offering to replace
all my many water bottles for free. I saw on their website that
Whole Foods Market is participating in the replacement movement,
and since that’s where I bought mine, that’s where I
went. I walked into my local store with a bag full of old bottles
and no receipt, and do you know what they did?


They took them with no argument, and gave me a gift card for $110.


I wish I could tell you that I turned around and bought the new,
non-BPA-lined Sigg bottles, but I did not. I know the bottles
don’t have BPA, but I don’t know what they DO have
instead since the company still lines them with a proprietary
formula, so I skipped over to the Klean Kanteen section –
pure stainless steel – and bought several of them from Whole
Foods Market instead.


Sigg stopped using BPA in their liners a few months ago, I think;
if you don’t know if you’ve got an old or new bottle,
click target="_blank">HERE to see examples of both on the Sigg
website. And if you’ve got an old bottle, I encourage you to
trade them in. It’s completely free, totally painless, and
definitely worth the effort. But hurry - they're only offering the
"replacement plan" (NOT "recall"!) through the end of October.