Water Bottles - the ugly truth and chic alternative

The Green Shows just pinned this on Pinterest and I'm so glad they did.  I never thought about the "less attention to public systems" aspect before.
We LOVE our silicone sleeve glass bottles.  Beautiful design, don't you agree?  Lifefactory makes this one, but Amazon has several varieties and I'm even seeing inexpensive versions (reduced quality goes w/ the price:-/ ) at Target and our local grocers.  I use 8 oz. ones for school lunches.

Waste Not

piles of t shirt strips = straps and necklaces at a later date

stack of sleeve = ruffles, posies and/or more strips

I am always excited when able to reduce waste of any kind.  We are making mosaics out of plastic container caps at our elementary school right now - awesome.  Southern Houston grocery stores are finally recycling plastic bags - whew.  I'm making necklaces out of frozen juice container caps - chic (hopefully!).
And today I decided to actually measure how little/or how much, depending on your half full/half empty perspective, fabric waste was leftover after cutting 8 t-shirt "T Bags".

This is all that remains of 8 unloved t-shirts that would have otherwise met their demise in a landfill or been shipped (at great environmental cost) to Africa for donation & resale.   Much of this small pile (scissors shown for scale) will be used as pillow and doll stuffing also.  I call that fantastic.

beautiful GLASS water bottle

I am over the moon about a new water bottle that arrived yesterday.  I've been looking for a good plastic alternative and there are two companies that make wonderful glass bottles with silicone sleeves.  LOVE mine, isn't it sleek?

 This version is 22oz (the biggest you can get) and it's by Takeya.  Screw-off lid (no safety toggle for that though- only bummer), window for viewing volume, handy loop for carrying.

Lifefactory also makes a really cute one with cut out polka dots, below.  Both are on this page of my favorite eco vendor, Reuseit.com.
I'm ordering the Lifefactory ones for my kids. 

Lifefactory