To start, let me say that I drink bottled water. There are various reasons for it, which I won’t get into, and I’d really like to Not argue the relative merits of this.
Problem: I drink about 2 litres of water a day. This is almost exactly one large bottle of water. This means that I end up with rather a lot of bottles.
Further problem: Our local authority won’t recycle plastic bottles.
So, I could throw them away, but that would be incredibly wasteful. The question then becomes what to do with them all? There doesn’t seem to be any creative way to recycling, and while I can use some of them for storage there are rather more than I need. Any creative suggestions?
Also if you want to discuss related problems with other random objects you’re more than welcome to use this thread for it as well.
Kit
REDUCE: Quit buying a new bottle each time.
REUSE: Refill the bottle, rather than buying a new one each time.
RECYCLE: Not really worth it with most types of plastics (as your local authority has figured out).
Get a water filtering pitcher or simply buy your purified water a gallon or two at a time (i.e. buy it in 2 gallon containers, not buy 16 one liter bottles) then keep refilling one (1) bottle until it need to be replaced.
I’ve been using the same 6 plastic bottles for as long as I can remember. I refill them from a purified tap (like this) that I installed. A fairly simply install if you are reasonable handy with basic tools.
In Connecticut, all plastic drink bottles have a 5 cent deposit, to ensure that you turn them back in to be recycled.
All bottles, that is, except for water bottles. Blows my mind.
I see your location is Cambridge, which I assume to be Cambridge, Mass.? If so, Malden Mills, the folks behind Polartec fleece, uses recycled drink bottles to manufacture their fabric. I sorta doubt that they’ll have a drop-off location for your bottles, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to contact them to see if they can help you find ways to recycle.
That said, I concur with the previous posts that you should reuse your bottles, either by refilling from a larger source, or by filtering your own water. It’ll save you money in the long-term, too.
Oh, yeah, Patagonia also uses recycled bottles in their fleece. I understand they have a store in the Boston area; you might want to talk to them, too.
Cambridge, MA (I live 1-town over) recycles plastics (#1-#7), so I’m guessing kitarak is in the original Cambridge.
Duh…the spelling should’ve clued me in. Pay attention the next time, dagnabbit! :smack:
that and s/he called the local government the “local authority” which sounds so very English. 
