Show your Pinecrest pride and Rise Above Plastic!Why the Pinecrest Elementary reusable water bottle will be your longest lasting and favorite school supply everWe’re all about trying to help our planet, and using a high-quality reusable stainless steel water bottle to reduce the use of plastics is part of that mission.

Top 5 Reasons to get the REUSABLE STAINLESS STEEL Pinecrest Elementary water bottle:

1) THIS IS A HIGH QUALITY, LEAK-PROOF, SWEAT-PROOF AND RELIABLE WATER BOTTLE

We teamed up with ecoVessel to create a rugged, triple insulated stainless steel water bottle customized with our new school logo that will keep your cold drinks cold for up to 36 hours and your hot drinks hot up to 8 hours. These bottles have TriMax Triple Insulation technology – hot stays hot, cold stays cold, and the outside of the bottle won’t condense or change temperature. Buy a quality bottle once and it will last you a lifetime.

2) YOUR PURCHASE WILL HELP US GET A NEW ELKAY EZH2O BOTTLE FILLING STATION FOR OUR SCHOOL

In partnership with ecoVessel and Elkay, we created a fundraiser where if we sell 200 of our customized Pinecrest Elementary water bottles, we can purchase a new Elkay ezH2O water bottle filling station for our school. This new water bottle filling station will

replace one our of old fountains and will provide easy and quick access to fresh, filtered drinking water and hydration.

Each time a student fills his or her new reusable bottle, we are minimizing our dependency on disposable plastic bottles, and eliminating plastic from our environment. The filling station will help our school do our part to rise above plastic, and promote healthy hydration at our school.

3) REDUCE WASTE

According to The Guardian and National Geographic, globally humans buy a million plastic bottles per minute, that's 20,000 per second, and 91% of plastic is not recycled. With a lifespan of close to 1000 years, it’s safe to say that every plastic bottle you’ve used exists somewhere on this planet, in some form or another.

4) SAVE MONEY

Most of us know that the cost of drinking bottled water vs. tap water will never work out in your favor, but let’s do the math. Assuming you drink 64 oz of water per day, you’d consume a little under three 20 oz bottles of water per day. Those 3 bottles per day would cost you roughly $3/day or $1,095 per year. That same 1,095 bottles filled with tap water would cost you about $0.49 PER YEAR. Another way to look at it is that as soon as you buy your first bottle of water, you’ve already spent double what you would for an ENTIRE YEAR of tap water. Wow.

5) PROTECT YOUR HEALTH BY STAYING AWAY FROM PLASTIC AND CHEMICALS

OK, so what about water purity? The labels on plastic water bottles usually show crisp icy glaciers, trickling mountain streams or fresh springs, but that doesn’t mean that that is where the water is actually coming from.

It turns out that approximately 25% of bottled water is sourced from tap (according to the National Resource Defense Council). Sure, some companies filter or radiate the tap water with ultraviolet light before selling it to you at several thousand times the cost of tap water. But as a matter of fact, tap water is actually held to higher purity standards than bottled water is, in the United States.

There are various claims made about chemicals leaching from plastic bottles into the drinking water, however sorting these out is difficult because the term “plastic bottle” can refer to any one of several different types of bottles with distinctly different chemical properties.

Without knowing the exact chemical compounds in the plastic container you’re drinking from, or the precise water source where the water was bottled, or if that water was treated or filtered before being bottled…why risk it, when there are proven safe alternatives that are also better for our planet?!

THE PROBLEM WITH PLASTIC…Humans go through an astounding amount of plastic, which from the manufacturing process to disposal wreaks havoc on our environment. Estimates show that by 2050, there will be astonishing 12 million metric tons of plastic in landfills. That amount is 35,000 times as heavy as the Empire State Building. As we mention above, a whopping 91% of all plastic is not recycled.

What happens to all that non-recycled plastic?

ends up in a landfill and seeping toxic compounds into our groundwater, soil and streams poisoning entire ecosystems

eventually makes its way in our waterways and oceans and is mistaken for food by sea birds, fish, marine mammals, etc.

becomes part of the food chain that WE are at the top of

Still not convinced? Let’s see if we can help with some potential questions.

If we all buy the same Pinecrest Elementary water bottle, won’t mine get lost in the mix at school?Kids love to customize! Grab some of your favorite stickers and personalize your bottle to make it your own! Be sure to label it with your child’s full name (Sharpies work well) and consider some of the following bling for your bottle:

charms and keychains for the handle a customized boot to protect the base from dings (sold on Etsy) interchangeable spout lid (available at the school store)

This is a high price point. Why so much?A non-customized ecoVessel 20oz Boulder bottle retails for $26.95, so we’re getting a pretty amazing deal. Other quality insulated stainless steel water bottles of this size cost

anywhere between $23 and $36. Keep in mind, this is a one-time purchase; if you take care of your bottle it will last you forever. Did we mention it doesn’t sweat in the Miami heat?! This bottle will keep ice frozen overnight so even if you forget to refill your child’s water bottle before school, it will still be cold from the day before.

My family already owns too many water bottles. Why would buying another be a smart idea?Depending on the make and material of the water bottles you already own, you may be doing more harm to your healthy than you realize by drinking from them. Check the materials of your non-insulated water bottles at home and see if the bottles are recyclable. If so, recycle them and make way for this quality bottle. If your bottles are not recyclable, turn them into sand toys, pots for nonedible seedlings, garden scoopers, storage containers for writing utensils and other creative uses. Pinterest is a good resource here.

We agree that just purchasing more new water bottles is not a sustainable solution. If you already own an insulated stainless steel water bottle, then congratulations! You’ve made a great purchase that with care, will last you a long time. Keep reading to see how you can still help bring the Elkay bottle filling station to our school.

We already have a reusable insulated stainless steel water bottle, but I want to help bring the Eklay ezH2O bottle filling station to our school. What can I do?Excellent! Thank you for wanting to contribute to the fundraiser. Because of the great price and quality of the Pinecrest Elementary water bottle, you might consider buying one for a friend, family member, teacher, administrative staff member or even your favorite shop owner! A quality water bottle is a great gift and in addition to contributing to our mission to bring the water bottle filling station to our school, you’ll also be spreading the good word to ditch plastic water bottles and choose healthy hydration.

You might also consider donating $20 to the Pinecrest Elementary PTA Green Committee to help bring the water bottle filling station. Monetary contributions will be put toward installation of the new unit.

Is this bottle dishwasher safe?To maintain the quality of the triple insulation, ecoVessel recommends that the bottles be hand washed. Plus, this will ensure that the cool stickers your kids use to decorate them stay fierce and intact.

A REMINDER…Water is good for you, so keep drinking it! Owning this durable, reusable, stainless steel water bottle is the first step. Reusing it, caring for it properly, and adding it to your mental checklist of things to remember when you leave the house (wallet, keys, water bottle) is what actually makes your purchase sustainable for our environment.

And yes, you alone will make a difference.

Will you join us in ditching plastic and using reusable drinking bottles? Click here to purchase your Pinecrest Elementary reusable water bottle.

We invite you to do your own exploration for knowledge on the subject and have included some links below to start with.EcoWatch: 1 Million Plastic Bottles Bought Every Minute, That’s Nearly 20,000 Every Secondhttps://www.ecowatch.com/plastic-bottle-crisis-2450299465.html

TEDEd: The Life Cycle of a Plastic Bottlehttps://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-really-happens-to-the-plastic-you-throw-away-emma-bryce

National Geographic: A Whopping 91% of Plastic Isn’t Recycled http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/plastic-produced-recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment/

Bloomberg: The Life of a Plastic Water Bottle https://www.bloomberg.com/news/photo-essays/2015-02-27/the-life-of-a-plastic-water-bottle

The TRUE Cost of Bottled Water vs. Tap Water (& Comparative Purity & Taste Test Results) https://20somethingfinance.com/bottled-water-versus-tap-water/

The Truth About Taphttps://www.nrdc.org/stories/truth-about-tap

Surfrider Foundation: Rise Above Plasticshttp://www.surfrider.org/psa/entry/rise-above-plastics