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Beverage Independence Featured on Jun 26, 2008
Challenge
Soft-drinkers, join a thirst revolution! Bag the bottles and make your own drinks for the next month.
Individual Result
Avoiding bottled soda, tea, and sports drinks will reduce your CO2 emissions by 25.7 lbs for the month.
Rally Impact
1531 people have reduced CO2 emissions by 17.28 tons by completing this challenge so far. That's equal to turning off the electricity of 15 homes for about 1 month!
Challenge Details
Special thanks to Soda Club for sponsoring this challenge.
Talk about beverage independence! Using your tap water and a Soda-Club sparkling water and soda maker, a typical American household can slash its soft drink packaging by over 90%.
Remember the Boston Tea Party? (Tea tax? Samuel Adams? Bunch of Colonial longshoremen in not-very-convincing costumes dumping crates of tea off British ships?) Well, think of this Challenge as a Green Tea Party. But don’t throw anything into your local harbor. Show your spirit by dumping bottled soft drinks from your menu for a month. Americans drink an estimated 14.3 billion gallons of soft drinks and sports drinks each year. Bringing that number down is a carbon revolution! Now, doesn’t that homebrewed iced tea taste better already?
The Carbon Connection
If you look at the life cycle of a bottled soft drink, you’ll find that the manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal of the product all result in CO2 emissions. The transportation part of the life cycle; however, is the biggest CO2 culprit. Soft drinks are mostly made of water, and water is pretty heavy stuff. Moving bottled soft drinks requires trucks and a lot of fossil fuel.
Soda starts out as raw materials — the corn to make the sweeteners, the flavors, etc. Those raw materials for the flavoring are transported from their sources to a concentrate factory. From there, the concentrate is packaged and transported to one of many bottling plants spread around the country and around the world. The bottles and cans used in the bottling plant are also made elsewhere. All of these things get shipped separately to the bottling plant. At the bottling plant, the concentrate is combined with water and sweetener, carbonated, and then put into the bottles and cans. The finished soda then gets shipped, often hundreds of miles, to a distribution center and then on to your local grocery store. For each transportation leg, fossil fuel — often diesel truck fuel — is burned and carbon dioxide gets released.
Aside from the transportation, the manufacturing of soft drinks is a source of greenhouse emissions. Fossil fuels are burned to create the energy needed to manufacture the plastic, form the bottles, and then fill them with soft drink. Making an aluminum can is also energy-intensive. And while recycling plastic bottles and aluminum cans is good, not using them in the first place is even better.
Getting It Done
Need help meeting this Challenge? Here are a few suggestions:
- The simplest and undoubtedly healthiest solution to your summer thirst is good ol’ tap water. Its clean and doesn’t require any new bottles or trips to the store.
- Many people prefer something with a little more flavor than plain water. If that sounds like you, consider other un-bottled alternatives: iced tea, iced coffee, lemonade, or fruit punch. All can be made with your tap water plus fresh ingredients or drink powders. Maximize your carbon savings by minimizing the amount of energy used to make your replacement beverage. For example, make sun tea instead of boiling water on the stove.
- And if you typically go for bottled drinks when you’re at work or school, mix your drinks on the go! Make sure to have some drink mix and a water bottle handy so you can make your own soft drink with the available tap water.
- Sports drinks also come in powders that you can mix with tap water. Not only do you save carbon by not carting around all those bottles, but you also save money. Making Gatorade from powder can cost less than half as much as buying it in bottles. There are also recipes for making your own sports drinks from scratch. Everyone has their favorite recipe, so try to find one you like. Remember to add a little Nu Salt so that your homemade sports drink has the potassium you need to replace after exercising.
- If you must have bubbles, consider a home soda maker. These machines convert tap water into soda water that you can flavor a many different ways. A review of soda making machines is here.
- If you fall off the soda wagon a few times this month, no big deal. Just make sure you go for a drink from a soda fountain. Fountain machines make drinks using tap water, so they involve much less fossil fuel for transportation.
Have any of you already given up on bottled soft drinks? Do you have a really good recipe for sun tea or your own version of a sports drink, made from scratch? If so, share what you know in the Discussion section below.
Rules of the Challenge
This Challenge is intended for Rallyers who drink carbonated drinks and sports drinks. The Challenge asks you to not drink bottled or canned soft drinks or sports drinks for one month. By drinking tap water or homemade soft drinks, you will reduce your average CO2 emissions by 6 lbs per week or 25.7 lbs for the month. This Challenge is repeatable after 1 month.
Learn More
Forgo bottled water — and soda — to save the planet
Make Sun Tea
Make Your Own Soda
Roadcycler: Make Your Own Sports Drink
See the Math
Still with us? Let’s look at the known or estimated numbers before you work up too much of a thirst:
- According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, the average American drinks about 3.7 gallons of liquid per week. source
- Of those 3.7 gallons, 28.3% is some sort of carbonated soft drink and another 2.3% is a sports drink. That’s a total of 30.6%, or 1.1 gallons of sweetened beverage per week eligible for this Challenge. source
- According to the Pacific Institute, the processing, bottling, and transport of one gallon of bottled water requires the equivalent energy of burning 0.25 gallons of crude oil. Because of the bottling and transportation similarities between soft drinks and bottled water, we will use the Pacific Institute number for this Challenge as well. Chances are more energy is needed to produce a soft drink than to simply bottle water, so our carbon savings number will probably be a low estimate. source
- Burning one gallon of crude oil releases 21.7 lbs of CO2 into Earth’s atmosphere. source
Now put all that together to get the following equation:
- As you can see, that all comes out to a savings of 6 pounds of CO2 equivalent per week or 25.7 pounds per month.
Your numbers will vary depending on the amount of soft drinks you’re replacing. Just remember that the idea is to cut down on the energy needed to package and transport what you’re drinking. So drinking more juice or some other packaged drink is not a good alternative. Make your own soft drinks or go for water. And declare your independence from the bottle.
Discuss Beverage Independence:
I hate to put a bee in people’s bonnet, BUT DO NOT MAKE SUN TEA. As nice as it is to save the planet by not boiling water, it’s not safe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_tea#Sun_tea
Sun Tea does not reach a properly hot temperature to kill bacteria. Leaving tea out in the sun for hours is the same as leaving any other food out in the sun for hours—a big risk for little squiggles.
Please boil your water when making tea! One way to do it without heating as much water is to boil only about 1/4-1/2 of the water in the pitcher and add unheated water. It doesn’t take a whole pitcher of boiling water to make it properly dark.
I know a really good recipe for Sun Tea. It’s on simplyrecipes.com under Beverages. The best recipe blog I know.
I dont drink sodas, they are a huge containers full of sodium wich is the number one source of water retainer on you body.
I simply drink water with lunch, breackfast, dinner etc.
when i go to a restaurant i order water that is $2.00 you save everytime you eat out and you dont have to worry about getting fater by the second (this just my personal opinion and my own way to do things not trying to offend any one).
I play in a band call INBRYO from Dallas, TX i’m the drummer, we have played with Otep before, we support their Ideals and what they stand for 100%
Erick
INBRYO
Got faced with a little Silk chocolate soy milk to-go bottle (plastic) and decided it was sadly a no-go given this challenge. The way I am living this challenge is no bottled liquids at all.
Been trying to cut out the sodas for a while as it is. This should do the trick. Now I drink RO water from the thing under the sink out of my stainless steel water bottle. For flavor, I add some mint, lemon grass, or lcitrus from the trees outside. Caffine comes from coffee or tea made at home. Got the kids working on being soda free, but DH is a whole other story!
Never touch the stuff, so this one is easy.
doesn’t hurt to just have a reuseable bottle for water, plus it saves money on buying bottle water! ,, ((()))
I AM AFRAID I CAN’T DO THIS CHALLENGE. I WAS ONLY THINKING I DON’T DRINK SODA, I HATE SODA, IT CAN EAT CORROSION OFF CAR BATTERIES. I CAN DO THIS. BUT ALL I DRINK IS HOMEADE TEA AND BOTTLED WATER. I FORGOT ABOUT THE BOTTLED WATER, BUT ONLY BECAUSE THE WATER IN MY TOWN IS SICK, AND YOU CAN TASTE THE CHEMICALS IN IT. BUT I DO USE IT FOR MY TEA, BECAUSE ITS HIDES THE GROSE TASTE.
I only drink water from my sink, make tea with bags, and buy 10 packets of kool-aid for 2 bucks. I havent had a soda in three years. I never drink anything carbonated. I never buy anything in something other than glass. Then I recycle it.
Try that everyone. Its made my savings soar, and my body more healthy. Chanllenge complete already.
Guys, I’ll start this challenge for the end of this week. Just the time to finish bottle storage..
I have greatly reduced the amount of bottled beverages in the last year or two, but I still have about 1 Vernors a day. I am down to tap water out of my Brita pitcher, coffee and orange juice, and the occasional tea. I do like me a Vodka and Tonic once it a great while, but Vodka and Limeade (from frozen can) is good too, especially in the summer. I need to try making fresh limeade….
I’m getting ready to go back to my Polycarb. water bottle and Celestial Seasonings instant powder teas, sweetened with Stevia (not splenda or nutrasweet)....I did this last summer and I don’t think I drank bottled soda for almost 3 months straight. I think I can break my soda habit for good now since I’m only down to 1 per day, and I’ve already given up bottled water.
Considering my avg daily consumption and what the chart says I will be reducing my CO output by at least 20 lbs per week. Should help mu diet efforts too.
I will officially start my month tommorrow. I am finishing off my last bottle as I type. Anyone know how to make homemade dr pepper?
I’m totally into this challenge.. just gotta get my hubby into it
Of course giving up the tonic doesn’t mean you have to give up the gin or the vodka, you just have to drink it straight up! Not a big soda drinker, but I do like cold microbrew now and then, so thinking I might investigate some a little homebrew instead.
i nvr drink soda and reject it everytime someone offers one to me. Soda is way to sugary bad fer yur health, and teeth.Imagine all those ppl hu drink soda all day. x_x I take water and milk :]
We gave up soda long ago but we do make our own tea by boiling water on the stove. Next time I’m going to try to make the sun tea.
i think i can do this! lol i just am not sure how to convince the ppl i live with to do the same. ne suggestions?
This should be interesting-Dad will go on how the Soda not being good anymore, I have started liking vanilla zero the last few weeks but I’ll switch back to making my own icetea.
I never drink soda unless it’s absolutely necessary. My company gives free soda everyday, but I never even touch the soda vending machine. I didn’t like the idea of taking the sugar pill by the can or the cancer pill by choosing the ‘diet’ flavor.
goodness this is going to be hard! Sorry to say.. but I have two or three can of pop a week! Oh well.. This will be good for my motivation.. and for the kids at my job! They drink prolly as much as I do.. maybe I can use this as an at-home project for them too.. wonders The only bad thing is I hope I don’t lose any weight… I’m already waaaaayy underweight as it is (I have the metabolism of a hummingbird) crosses fingers Thank you for the good ideas for my summer daycare job!
You just can’t beat sun tea. There’s just something really special about it, and it tastes way better than any bottled tea you get at the store, in my opinion. Man, I haven’t had sun tea in (gulp) years. Shame on me! Starting tomorrow, I’m making some.
now I can tell a lot of people to stop drinking :D
ya iam going to quit taking soft drinks…. and will save planet earth(my contribution)...
This is going to help me so much. I started a diet already and I have decided to give on sodas and other drinks that are high in sugar. I am super glad milk doesn’t count or I would not last one day. I love making my own drinks anyway(I think it is kind of fun). I hope I can stick to it:)
I gave up bottled soda a while ago, but I LOVE bottled tea! This is going to be hard, but hey, we’re all saving the world :)
Hi. To answer the questions below, this challenge is for people who drink soda and other bottled soft drinks. It challenges them to give them up for one month, or find non-bottled alternatives. Milk is not included in this challenge, thanks.
i was wondering that too…is milk bad? i can’t get rid of milk, it only comes in jugs
i dont drink soda EVER in my house. yu cant find a can of soda ANYWARE! well, unless yu count the few scattered cans around the house that are 15 years old(no kidding!)... so i shudnt drink gatorade unles its made frum packets, rite?? and is buying milk bad????
haha i only drink tap water this will be easy…
Okay – this is my first challenge! I’m busting out the water bottle!!! I did buy these powder packets to add to your water that are sugar-free (eventually I’m going to get off the artificial sweetner, too), but some of them have caffeine added, and some have electrolites! I paid $2 for 10 of them, so at 20 cents/piece – I should be saving some money over what I was paying for iced tea, diet pepsi, etc.!!! With the price of gas… that’s awesome!!!!
I had quit drinking soda a while back, but I’ve started again. Hopefully this will be a better motivator for me to quit again!
I don’t normally drink a lot of soda anyway however where I live the tap water is undesirable and quite nasty so I have to buy water from a store I don’t know that there is any other way around buying the water but I will certainly lay off the sodas and bottled teas that I normally buy frequently and I hope that I can make an impact
Stocking up on the powdered drinks for hot summer days…
TTFN Soda Pop!!
G’bye soda!
i’m so excited for this! I stopped drinking soda a while ago but then started again – i need to stop as I’m training for my second marathon and I’m excited to see what type of weight i lose just from not having all that sugar!
bet we’ll shed a couple of pounds too without all those sweeteners!!! =)
yay! Not only do I already do this, but this is also something that I’m trying to teach the kids I worth with to do as well. Maybe I’ll show them these facts to help encourage them
We can reuse the bottles right? That’s what I usually do with my water bottles. When my parents buy them I just use the bottles over again.
I have to admit that I’m terrified of this challenge because I love Dr. Pepper. But I decided to go for it!
Psh, I can live without caffeine for a while. Hello, Organic Milk? Yumm. The plus to that is that it’s in a carboard carton. :D Less waste. I don’t drink from bottles anyway, and I recycle my cans, but this seems like something I can pass onto my peers and co-workers.
No fresca? I can handle that. I guess. I powdery lemonade couldn’t be any worse. I hope. I will try to the ability of a determined preteen. Maybe a little more, though. I won’t be stingy.
Am anxious to see how much $ we will save by doing this – not big on soda anyhow (ever notice how much high fructose corn syrup is literally in every single thing??!!!)but am hoping to find decent wine in a box (if possible). Will track and record what we would have spent and at then end of challenge see what we saved – this ought to be interesting.
During summer, I prepare a home-made drink: it is called Kefir and it looks like limonade. It avoids us from buying sodas and fuzzy water in bottles!
What I think I’ll do is take the bottles I have now, and just reuse. I’ve been wanting to do that anyway, any by keeping the bottles and using them, I’m cutting cost AND trash.
I’m a soda-holic, but I want to stop. Best time to start is now, right? Right! And fountain soda, I already know, will be my down side. But, no more cans for at least me. At least I’ll try.
Speak Poetry! Speak Volumes!
i am assuming this challenge is also good for giving up glass bottles, is that true? no soda in this house but we do drink iced tea … all in glass bottles.
numi makes great organic iced tea bags … i just stocked up and will be brewin’ my own. http://www.worldpantry.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ExecMacro/numitea/home.d2w/report?hbtype=ppc&;hbv1=goog&hbv2=numibrand
im tryin to give up soft drinks. havent had 1 in a week. and there is a pop machine by the apts across the st. from my house. its kinda hard but i think its more of a habit. im use 2 getting up every morning and goin 2 the pop machine. ive been making tea instead. damn its good. its also helping me lose weight too
im tryin to give up soedt drinks. havent had 1 in a week. and there is a pop machine by the apts across the st. from my house. its kinda hard but i think its more of a habit. im use 2 getting up every morning and goin 2 the pop machine. ive been making tea instead. damn its good. its also helping me lose weigt too
We’ve started making tea at work instead of buying it at the diner downstairs. I have stopped buying bottled water and refill the bottles with filtered water from home. Soft drinks aren’t much of a problem because I don’t drink them very often
I think this is a pretty good idea. I might try it.
As long as beer isn’t on the list, I’m in! I have tried to quit drinking soda’s for years. I call them “liquid satan” because there is absolutlely NOTHING natural or good for you in them! But sometimes a glass of water just doesn’t hit the spot when you are eating a greasy pizza or burger…. so i guess I will be removing those from my diet as well. Who would have thought Carbonrally would help me stay in shape?!
I’m already there! Now that most major bottle makers (including Nalgene!) have started making Lexan bottles without BPA there shouldn’t be anything to keep you from installing a RO system at home and carrying your water with you.
Well as long as it does not include coffee… you know the kind you make in yoru coffee maker.. or teh coffee you but at the Cafe’s.. Im in! I really can’t give up coffee. LOL But soda, and other bottle drinks (especially bottled water) Hell yeh I can do it.
I will miss the orange “energy” Vitaminwater, which I love b/c it tastes like TANG. But the original Tang was good enough for the astronaughts (sp), so it’s good enough for me! I will mix my own.
And Gwynnes, you can mix Vodka with Tang instead of the Tonic (that’s one of my fave drinks at Tremont 647—Tangtini). Mmmmm….Tang!!
I’ll be bummed to give up the fresh OJ my grocery store sells, but cut-up fruit in water is really refreshing!
what do people recommend in terms of good, reusable bottles? Sigg? but how about something for a bike or a boat? (I tend to not like the standard plastic water bottles for bikes.)
That’s a great one! I’m good at drinking the water from the fridge with a glass when I’m home… but at the office, I have to have a diet coke a day! just one a day!!! the rest is yes bottle of water, small one… bad… I know… I’ll try to get better!
I have not bought any soda is over 6 months. Not only is it bad for the planet but it wreaks havoc on your body. Both the sugar sweetened and artificially sweetened soft drinks are terrible for you. I drink filtered tap water and organic juice now.
I have been only drinking water and soy milk for a while now, and so I will re-use my glass goya bottle to refill all day everyday. Does soy milk count if its from a recycled carton? I hope not, cuz I cant live without it.
Getting bubbly without buying the bottle is difficult. You can get the whole carbonating system, but that’s still not tonic :).I’ve been making iced tea and iced fruit tea for awhile (which isn’t actually a tea since it doesn’t contain tea leaves. Upside is: no caffeine, so it won’t keep you up) but those make excellent mixers for a refreshing summer cocktail. Admittedly, my motivation for making my own beverages stemmed more from the fact that I live on a 4th floor walk-up apartment, so lugging bottles up the stairs got old quickly. But I suppose it’s saved a good deal of carbon (and $$ too) over the 3 years I’ve been there!
I’m embarrassed to say it but the hardest part of this will be giving up a nice gin & tonic or vodka tonic in the evening, since tonic counts as a bottled soda! Count me in. Can’t kill me, right?
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