I really like that term, greenwashing.  It’s the perfect way to describe what went on with SIGG water bottles:

“Last week, SIGG Switzerland, the makers of popular aluminum reusable water bottles — a must-have accessory for the fashionably eco-friendly set —  admitted that prior to August 2008, their bottles contained the chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA).”

About about two years ago, when BPA first started appearing on people’s radar, people started buying SIGG bottles like crazy because they are aluminum.  Therefore they don’t contain that harmful chemical associated with plastic, right?  WRONG.  Apparently SIGG bottles are lined with plastic, and that plastic contained BPA until one year ago.

So here’s a case where I guess I am lucky that I’ve been unable to afford the latest fad green item.  I picked up a couple of cheap BPA-free plastic water bottles at Target that we use.  I have to say though that I even eye BPA-free plastic with suspicion.  They replaced BPA with something, right?  Is it entirely possible that they replaced it with some other chemical that, in 5 years, will be exposed as carcinogenic?

What I really want to do is to just stop using plastic altogether and drink water out of a glass container.  The beauty of this is I could, for example, just use a quart-size canning jar.  Super cheap and chemical free, plus infinitely, easily recyclable.  Unlike plastic, which is hard or sometimes even impossible to recycle.  Note that I said “I want to” … I haven’t made this change yet.  It’s something in my hopefully-near future, but I’m not there yet.

The crappy thing about this business with SIGG was that they enjoyed a huge windfall based on misinformation about their product, and did nothing to correct the situation, for well over a year.  Read the entire article right here.