Category Archives: Going Too Far

Sigg is a sort of poster child for environmentalism. It’s not as well-known as Whole Foods, but it’s a staple for tree huggers. You make back your investment in 18 to 25 refills, and the bottles are really cute! The biggest thing, though, is that it protects you from all that stuff that leaches from plastic bottles into your water:

But the news broke a couple weeks ago that Sigg water bottles, up until last August, contained BPA in their lining. This is extremely disappointing. It may seem trivial, the slight BPA that may or may not have contaminated my water, at levels that are extremely low. But it’s larger than that.

Once you start following environmental issues, the world becomes an extremely scary. You turn into a sort of germophobe. Every food has something bad in it. Even if it’s organic, it may not actually be healthy, because it’s processed. At parties, you eye the hor d’oeuvres suspiciously, convinced the naive host bought overpriced food from a vendor that sources from a faceless food processor. Every lip gloss and lotion because a provider of cancerous beauty. The microwave looks ominous, and the dust on the stairwell must contain lead. And don’t get me started about the water.

You become distrustful of the government, especially after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and hearing about how our foods and cosmetics contain all sorts of stuff the Europeans won’t touch with a ten-foot pole. You wonder who you can trust anymore. You can’t trust the government, you can’t trust brands, and you can’t trust yourself because there is too much information to absorb. You wonder what unhealthy things are blooming in your body, waiting to pop up and kill you, because you’ve scarfed down McDonald’s in the past.

And then, just to freak you out, one of your favorite brands, one that you thought you could turn to when you didn’t want to have to think anymore about what scary things lurk inside, admits that it too, had scary things inside it.

Ok, breathe, Alden. Thanks to Tree Hugger, another brand was called to account. And I can keep buying Siggs. Things are slowly changing.

Slowly. Changing. Breathe.

UPDATE: Sigg is offering to exchange a new Sigg bottle for your old one if you wish. Info on how to do that here. Via Consumerist.