30 Days Without Cans: Good Try or Epic Fail?

Well it is time to pay the piper. I epically failed at my self-imposed challenge of going thirty days without using aluminum cans.

So here is what happened. We got a soda stream and I can’t say enough good things about this contraption. I love a good glass of sparkling water and the soda stream came through for me. The first two weeks were great. I drank the soda stream water and we filled our growler a couple of times at Half Acre and at Metropolitan. (Both excellent breweries if you haven’t been yet!)

Now here is where it all went south. We hosted a birthday party for my daughter’s fourth birthday about two weeks into the challenge. We invited about 60 people over to our house. I knew we couldn’t make enough sparkling water in the soda stream for everyone so I (sigh) bought some La Croix at Costco. Now the day of the birthday party I didn’t drink one but the days following I weakly helped myself to the deliciousness that is La Croix.

If the La Croix slip up been my only failure, I don’t think I could classify it as epic. But fast forward to a few days later to my friend Ryan’s birthday at the Cubs’ game and I managed to drink a couple of cans of Bud Light without even thinking about it. (Palm to face)

Where does that leave my challenge? One of my favorite quotes says ‘we don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.’ For two weeks, I did a very good job avoiding aluminum cans. If we can all be a little more mindful about things like aluminum can usage we are heading in the right direction. We can’t change overnight but making these small changes is progress. (Plus, I recycled all of my shame-filled La Croix cans. So there’s that…)

Starting tomorrow, I am going to give thirty days without cans another try! Who is with me?

Author: Courtney Bellmann

30 Tage Ohne Dosen

When I lived in Germany, we very rarely drank out of aluminum cans. In Germany, all aluminum cans have a twenty-five cent deposit on them. The deposit can be refunded at any location where cans are sold. However, it really pushed us to drink less soda. When we, on occasion, drank beer, we would drink it out of glass bottles. The bottles also have a deposit but its only seven cents. (For some reason the seven cents was easier to swallow, even though we always returned the bottles and cans. Ha Ha!)

So what’s going on with aluminum cans? Why does Germany want to discourage people from drinking out of them or at the very least, make it very painful to not recycle them? It takes more energy to mine and produce aluminum than any other metal. According to The World Counts, we are using over 200 billion aluminum cans a year. (And now take this next statistic with a grain of salt considering the source) The Aluminum Association states that 67% of aluminum cans are recycled in the United States.

This brings me to our 30 Tage Ohne Dosen challenge. My husband and I have decided that we are going to do our very best to go the next thirty days without buying or consuming any beverages out of aluminum cans. Before you worry that we won’t be able to drink any beer or sparkling water, (GASP) we have plan.

One of my passions is to support local businesses. In Lincoln Square, we are surrounded by amazing breweries that will fill up your growlers with their delicious beer. When the time comes to buy some beer, we’ll just hit up our favorite brewery and bring our growler. :)

Sparkling water is a whole different story. I drink many, many cans a day and love it so very much. Our plan to tackle this addiction is to buy a soda stream. This comes with a high initial cost but my husband has found a pretty clever way to bring down the long-term costs. It requires a little bit of space but we are purchasing a large C02 tank that will live in our basement. We’ll be able to refill the tank for the soda stream twenty times for a couple of dollars each time.

If this sounds way too extreme for you (and check back in with me in a few weeks after giving up my precious La Croix) one thing you can do to make a difference is ALWAYS RECYCLE YOUR CANS!!!! Also, check our instagram (@puromundum) in the next few weeks for pictures of our new C02 tank. It’ll be a beauty.

Author: Courtney Bellmann