If you've come to my yoga class at all in the past few months, you've probably seen me drinking out of a yogourt container. I am trying to make a statement. It has a few parts. One is, I'm lazy and I lose things. So the truth is, I've had fancy water bottles in the past, but I have misplaced them. I also used to drink bottled water back before I really thought about what I was doing. Now that I've got some sense in me, I drink tap water, and I drink it in whatever appropriate container I have handy.
I've tried a few different containers but some have a rim that dribbles and the best one I've got is a Liberté Yogourt container. It's 500 ml, so it holds enough, or if I'm doing hot yoga, I can run out and refill it. If I lose it, I can get another one easily.
It doesn't make sense to me that YOGA would go unconscious. Yoga is heading towards consciousness, towards the light, not heading backwards. So for yoga centres to even sell bottled water seems to me a bit off. I've been saying for a while, why don't we offer cups and people could use the tap? I even had a "great idea" recently that I'd collect yogourt containers and Rama Lotus could sell them at the cash for two bucks and the money would go to the Shepherds of Good Hope or something. But what if they're dirty? (People going into hot yoga are sweating on each other's mats on a gross carpet in many cases, these are not the people that are going to worry about having a cup be sterile.) I figured people could still buy bottled water if they wanted to so it's not like people are being forced into drinking out of a reclaimed container of dubious origin.
And then I looked into biodegradable drinking cups. We could sell those for two bucks and have the money go to charity. The brand I looked at didn't have lids though.
So I'm back to my yogourt containers. I'm going to bring extras with me to class. I'm going to sell them for ten bucks and give the money to charity (Shepherds of Good Hope) and I'm hoping to raise awareness that this bottled water thing is out of control and would people please use some common sense and be grateful for the tap water system we've spent many years developing. I want it to look good to reuse something. I know those metal bottles are awesome but after awhile they go stinky. They're too narrow at the top to really wash out.
And I've already been exposed to the plastic in the yogourt container. The amount that it is going to leech into my water while I'm waiting to drink it over a 90-minute period I would guess is probably negligible. I've already risked it by eating up all the yogourt. So I've already said I'm ready to take a risk.
So please just give it some thought. $30 water bottles. Hmm. They look cool and they're totally useful. And if you can keep track of them, please keep reusing them! Once you've lost it for good, consider looking around at something you've already got and put water in that rather than buy bottled water. In Ottawa. If you're travelling abroad, drink bottled water. Please. But if you're local, and you're not ill, and you trust the system we've got, please don't worry about how it will look to drink out of an alternative container. You'll be in good company!
