Thinking about removing plastic
 

Personally, I'm not sweating it too much. My wife is pushing it and it sounds like a lot of trouble to me

Has anyone done this? Seems like steel or titanium bottles exist. The aluminum ones are plastic lined. They all have plastic lids anyway. And you have to suck, not squeeze. I'm unconvinced. Plus I have 3 sizes I use for different rides. At $40 a pop, that kinda sucks.

My hydration pack I'm sure is plastic. Do they make them in silicone? Is silicone any better?

My shorts and jersey are all plastic, in a sense. Is this a problem with my sweaty body?

I can probably eliminate most single use stuff, and replace anything still plastic in the kitchen. But everything else, ugh?

Your efforts to reduce single use plastic will be good in the long term. However changing your water bottle out will do nothing but just make more plastic waste. Sort of like a couple decades ago, HGTV was on the big kick of showing home remodeling shows where they'd remove granite and other stone countertops, cabinetry and flooring in perfectly good condition and replace them with "green" products. Eventually people started to ask how green it is to be tearing out things that looked perfectly fine and replace them with green stuff that otherwise didn't alter the looks of the original design very much.

If microplastic in your body is your concern, then I seriously doubt the amount you get from the plastic bottle on your bike is significant compared to the other sources of microplastic entering your body. It's already in all the foods you eat. Including meats.

They do make stainless bottles with old fashion cork:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-BIC...-/123839530247

If you are worried about BPA type plasticizer - that is a coating on the inside of the plastic bottle. Wash your bottle through your dishwasher a few rounds, and that coating will wash off.

My wife likes to watch those shows too. And of course I frequently get hooked in on watching them with her. That practice was so infuriating to me. Perfectly good things being ripped out, and disposed of for no reason other than simply changing. Apparently enough people commented/complained about the practice, and a lot of the shows would show them salvaging those components for re-use elsewhere.

Also…doesn’t the liquid need to be in the container for some period of time (days/weeks/months) before the microplastics get into the fluid? IOW, the amount of time from when you fill the container pre-ride, to when you finish the ride isn’t long enough for it to happen???

Dan

People have been wigging out about hazards since we first figured out how to bang rocks together. Some of it is justified…cigarettes, DDT and asbestos come immediately to mind. “Plastics” is a very broad class of materials that include millions of different chemical formulations. The “plastics” in our bodies don’t likely come from the items you use in your home or on your bike every day. Those materials don’t break down easily and are, by and large, water insoluble. Your bicycle water bottle is either polyethylene or polypropylene (the former is more likely) and both are incredibly stable. The single use water bottles you might use (or have used) are made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) which is also incredibly stable. The reason you see so many of them on the side of the road or in the highly popular photo of them floating in a lake, stream, or ocean is because they don’t break down that easily. Even the cooking utensils you use don’t break down that easily, even when used in high heat situations.

The big problem I have with the “there’s plastics in our bodies!!!!!!!!!!!!” scare mongering is that people don’t identify what the plastic is nor the source. The source is implied…water bottles…but not confirmed. Even if you chew up your water bottle, it is highly unlikely that the material would end up in your bloodstream. Think water and oil. A huge source of microsized particles in the world is rubber from car tires…6 million tons of finely divided dust particles is injected into the air yearly. That material is on the side of every road and street in the world and has been deposited there for roughly 125 years. If anything, the dust deposition from the middle part of the 1900s is likely higher than it is today due to higher tire wear…current tires last 25,000 to 40,000 miles while 1950s bias ply tires lasted 4000 to 5000 miles.

Practically, metal bottles are much harder to use and stainless isn’t necessarily better. Stainless contains nickel and chromium which can be released under certain conditions (about as likely as a plastic bottle shedding plastic). Both are mildly to extremely toxic depending on the form of the metal ion. You also can‘t squeeze a metal bottle which means stopping to drink or riding no handed to open the bottle which risks crashing, which also hazardous to your health.

As to a silicon bladder, silicone is still a plastic. The more common bladders are made of TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) or PEVA (polyethylene-vinyl acetate). Both are relatively stable and nontoxic. PEVA is likely the material used by Camelback because new bladders from them had a distinct vinyl kind of taste during the first few usages. The vinyl taste is not “plastic” entering your body but probably left over monomer that we can detect in small concentrations but is relatively water insoluble.

Avoid using single use bottles just because we don’t need the litter. Soft, squeezable water bottles don’t really have BPA in them…that’s typical bicycle water bottles and single use PET bottles. It’s not part of the process. Hard polycarbonate bottles contained BPA because BPA made them transparent, heat resistant, and strong. BPA has been replaced by other materials.

Use your bottles. Wear them out. Buy more of the same and don’t worry.

I just bought stainless bottles and I think they are great for riding. They are heavy but they keep the water ice cold which I like a lot.

Are they insulated? Otherwise that wouldn't make sense.

Last week I had a rider in front of me hit a small bump and her metal bottle flew out of her cage and right in my path. I managed to avoid it but, yikes, just barely.

OP really came at us with a Deason vibe here, maybe unintentionally but I'm not sure.

They are made by Camelback and when I get done with my ride of one or two hours I still have ice in them. They are heavy though.

Dude!! Words hurt.

I was at the dentist waiting for the numbing medicine to kick in while contemplating a conversation I had with the wifey this morning.

The ride I finished on my face this spring, resulting in stitches and now a crown, has cost me about $1000 after insurance. Which I believe makes this the most expensive crash I've had.

I think a plastic bottle would put you down as well.

In that case you have my apologies for sure. You must admit though, if you re-read the post...? (Maybe I've just been broken by the "new normal" in General Chat. :lol:)
Seriously though: Best wishes on a speedy recovery!!

My wife and I switched from plastic to insulated stainless steel Camelback Podium bottles. They are heavier, but we don't care. It's really nice to drink ice cold water three hours into a ride. Hitting a pothole or rough railroad crossing at speed can bounce one out, but preventative measures can be taken. Slowing down while approaching the bump is the simplest, but a micro bungee wrapped around the bottle neck can work, too.

I can taste the plastic of my water bottles even after many years of use. So, obviously some chemicals are continuing to come off of them. How bad this is. I have no idea. But I have no practical alternative when riding.

While I think it is important to try to minimize exposure to plastics, minimizing is the point. It's simply not practical to completely avoid them. But it's relatively easy to avoid using plastics in the microwave, or not store food in plastic containers in the fridge. But to a very large degree, most foods come in some sort of plastic container. Most commonly some sort of plastic bag.

I'm 64 so likely most of the damage is already done. But younger people have had this relatively high exposure their whole lives and it seems a historically high number of young people are developing illnesses that were relatively uncommon in young people a generation or more ago. Plastics may be part of that.

It's important to note that many studies showing problems have stats like, XYZ increases your chance of ABC cancer by 20%. But that is likely 20% of a really small number. So, my chance of something bad went from 0.001% to 0.0012%, I think I can still sleep at night. I think many people see these type of stats and think it means if they eat this or that, they have a 20% chance of getting cancer ABC.

This is not to say it doesn't matter. All of these things can add up. It's just that it's easy to spook yourself. Choose your battles and live your life.

I have been using un-insulated stainless steel bottles and like them (Bivo brand) the also offer insulated ones

So, interesting thread regardless of it's Genesis. Plastics use as regards health is a valid concern. Plastics use as regards the health of the environment is a valid concern. There isn't tons that any individual can do about plastics in the environment, but there is a lot you can do about plastics in you! Whether you need to worry about it or not depends a lot on how old you are right now. Because of my work I get to meet more 100+ year old individuals than most. For a lot of reasons they didn't always have the best health practices. Many were/are downright self-destructive. Didn't/doesn't matter. Here they are, 100 years old anyway. Some still drive! For fully half their lives the environment was pretty free of truly nasty materials. Quite a few smokers and hard drinkers have lived to be 100 and beyond but there won't be any more!

If you are what is called a 'Boomer' in 2025 you are about at the limit for where the need to be concerned about lifestyle choices matters. Every decade younger than the magic Century mark means you spent more years in a polluted environment with your body in active (and hyper-active) metabolism. A Senior like myself, raised on the East Coast ... cooked. I won't impact overall future health risk by limiting plastics exposure. It literally is what it is. A Millenial and younger absolutely should stay away from bottled water/soft drinks, and invest in high quality water filtration and upgrade the washing machine to one that filters out plastic particles. HEPA filters on the HVAC unit is not going overboard.

Umm, then why have obesity rates been rising steadily, and why has it's prevalence among young people been rising steadily?

Metabolism as regards your fast dividing stem cells! The metabolism of youth and puberty are not really related to the metabolism of calories. Are you really in doubt about correlations of Cancer and fast dividing cells?

Many objects can be found in semi synthetic materials, for example rubber comes from Hevea trees, but you need to add some "ingredients" to get the characteristics you need from it, also some lycras are made with Bamboo fibers.

I remember leather pouches used to store water and wine when I was a kid (they were sold as souvenirs in Spain, quickly leaking if not used regularly), so you could imagine to design bottles that way...

Saddles are also made out of leather and metal, should be possible to make them out of light wood or bamboo fibers, too, etc.

I just don’t like the taste of the water from my plastic bottles, so I splurged and got stainless steel Bivo bottles. The company is in my home state, so that’s another plus.

Glad I'm not the only one! Every reusable water bottle I've ever tried makes the water taste like vinyl.

Instead I buy the single-use water bottles which taste OK to me. I rinse them out and re-use them several times.

For winter rides I add an insulated 16 oz stainless flask for coffee. Keeps it hot for hours. Fits a bottle cage - the strap is to stop it rattling - I only access it at rest stops, so instant access isn't a necessity
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...4f6c5a167.jpeg

Some people think vinyl sounds better.

But it explodes like a CF bike. Safer to stick with cassettes.