Switching plastics water jugs with a better eco-friendly alternative

In our quest to find better alternatives for mindfully living and in lieu of the aggressive research found all over the web regarding BPA in plastic, we have decided to stop purchasing the 2.5 gallon plastic water from the supermarket.
What does this mean? Well it means that we will need to embark in a quest for finding a safe alternative…below is our story.

We have evaluated all options out there, for example; water distilling, without getting to technical, the only thing that I don’t like about water distilling is dealing with hot water that takes 3 to 4 hours to boil to produce 1 gallon of distilled water and then gets poured into a plastic bottle for the cute price of $139 + shipping

you can purchase it here or if you have issues with plastic(like us) then you have to buy this

with the glass container for the economic price of $199.00 + shipping. But wait…since we don’t like plastic we will need to upgrade to the glass bottle and end up spending approximately $250 for clean distilled water. Ouch !

The pros: none for us

The cons: having a toddler running around the house with boiling water on the kitchen counter top every day for 4 hours sounds like a little hazard to me, plus it will be another task assigned to me, and I can barely keep up with the bread maker

but that’s another story.

Then after being frustrated for a couple of days trying to find a better solution and after extinguishing all my web searching capabilities I started exploring the option of having a water crock like this one

$26 approximately you can buy it here
we have a European kitchen with black granite counter tops so we we re thinking it will look awesome, but then I realized I had to either put in it on the corner of the counter (were Camilo grabs everything ) or further inside the counter(real estate is getting precious in the counter top neighborhood of our house) , for that I will need to purchase a counter crock stand $14 approximately

you can buy it here ...And then, the magic question arises… here comes the plastic bottle

Polycarbonate… NICE PLASTIC # 7 for just $16.95 , you can buy it here
once again we bumped into the plastic issue with little alternatives out there, but wait… long live the beer and wine brewing companies that still use glass bottles, remember… nice glass carboys in 3 or 5 gallon sizes ,so I decided to buy 2 of the 3 gallon carboys

from this friendly website They are made in Mexico and cost a mere $16.29, .66 cents cheaper than their endocrine disrupting plastic counterpart and safer for you and the environment.
Assuming that once filled they were going to be heavy, I purchased as well the Carboy Handles for 3 gallon Carboys

for a mere $5.76 the hauling of this puppies will be from our apartment to the car- to the supermarket shopping cart- to the car and back home, I’m planning on taking them for a ride every 10 days or so.

For lids, Ed at brewgadgets.com hooked me up with a couple of lids, this guy has the best prices on the net and the best service as well, plus he is very fair with the shipping(actual shipping charges) so ship it to your office and save a couple of bucks more.

But wait…here is the best part, I bought the carboys first and when I was getting ready to buy the water crock I then realized that we have an open kitchen and the main art piece of our home will be this huge artifact of approximately 70 inches tall on top of a counter top. So there I was again with another dilemma, but after doing a more extensive research and since we shifted last year from plastic water bottles to kleen Canteen stainless steel bottles, I searched like crazy for a stainless steel water dispenser, and.. Look what I found
I purchased from this restaurant supply site it is for tea, it gives a little industrial look to the kitchen and there a lots of options out there (insert pictures of other options)pricey tough, this one is the one that works best for us,(plus I’m already tired of this race and I can relax a little now that I’m approaching the finish line)

Price was $102 including shipping and a stainless lid (it comes with a plastic one).

In conclusion here is the final tab:

2 Water carboys + 2 lids + 2 handles + shipping = $60
Stainless steel tea dispenser + stainless steel lid + shipping = $102
Total BPA free water dispensing = $162.

approximate cost of disposable 2.5 gallons water jugs $2 to $3
refilling at you local grocery shop $.29 cents per gallon

You do the math...(if you fell like it)
in the long term you will save money and save the environment.. that is if you are switching from plastic water jugs to glass and stainless steel.

regarding the plastic spigot... I'm working on it.

And here is the final picture



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