The ethics of 5 gallon water cooler bottles...

So, since we had soooo much fun with my Sanke keg thread, let's see how the community feels about this one.

The collective knowledge of the HBT community has made it clear the 5 gallon water bottles available for water coolers (as long as they are made from #1 or #2 polymer and not the dreaded #7) are perfectly fine for fermenters and are pretty comparable to Better Bottles. Here's the issue:

When I walk into Home Depot and see the rack of water bottles for water coolers, the price is $6.99. The fine print, however, reads that an additional $6 deposit on the bottle is required. So:

1. Who owns the bottle?
2. If I bring the water bottle back, am I going to get a refund for my $6 plus tax, or will they only give me a refilled bottle in exchange?

I don't want to steal Culligan's / Arrowhead's / whoever's water bottle just so I can have a cheap fermenter.

Discuss if you dare....
-jkpq45

Eh...just use the spring water for brewing and take the carboy back dirty and get a new one. They sell more water, you get a shiny new, clean carboy for each batch. Problem solved :rockin:

I've two I trade out. One I use to make 5G batches of StarSan solution and one for secondary if I need to. I'll rinse the secondary out after use and return to get a fresh 5G of distilled water and mix up some more StarSan. Then, the emptied StarSan carboy gets used for a secondary or returned for the deposit.

I don't really use then for fermenters because of the possibility of scratches and infection vectors from the reused bottles. *shrug*

MMW's suggestion is actually quite amusing If the bottles were 6.5 gallons that would be even better.

I think it is a matter of cost in the end. With the Sanke debate the cost of the deposit does not cover the cost of the keg. I would think that a large company can get 5 gallon plastic bottles for less than $6 so the deposit covers the replacement cost.

I finally found a local grocery store, stocking Culligan #1 PETE bottles, that would "sell" the bottle, not just require a deposit. Both the sign by the bottles and the cashier confirmed I was purchasing the bottle for my own use--I could keep it or return it to get a deposit credit on a new bottle. Sunny times, huh? $6 5 gallon primary FTW!

MMW said:

Eh...just use the spring water for brewing and take the carboy back dirty and get a new one. They sell more water, you get a shiny new, clean carboy for each batch. Problem solved :rockin:

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That.

is.

AWESOME.

I finally found a local grocery store, stocking Culligan #1 PETE bottles, that would "sell" the bottle, not just require a deposit. Both the sign by the bottles and the cashier confirmend I was purchasing the bottle for my own use--I could keep it or return it to get a deposit credit on a new bottle. Sunny times, huh? $6 5 gallon primary FTW!

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How do we KNOW the cashier was athorized to OK you stealin-er buying the bottles? He/She could possibly even have made the sign themselves. 6$ for a 5 gal. jug seems pretty suspicious to me. We should alert the Moral Police. - Dwain

I get 4 gallon ones for $3.98 at Sam's they are #1 with no deposit I use them for Apfelwein. I have about 10 of them now need to start recycling some of them .

"The dreaded #7????" What sort of media boooshwa are you talking about? I drink from a #7 polycarbonate bottle all the time. So do several other family members. If we do, multitudes of other people do......nobody gettin' sick here, nobody droppin' over dead. There is endless hype & hysteria on a thousand thousand topics being peddled in this country 24/7/365, and I submit this is just another.

Twenty years ago, eggs were deemed to be BAD. Then, 15 years ago, only the yolks were BAD. Ten years ago, in a humorous flip-flop, yolks GOOD, whites BAD. For the last 5 years or so, the ferkin' egg is restored to its traditional status of bleedin' WUNDERBAR! And nowhere -NOWHERE- will you find a single incontrovertible scientific study proving ANY of the above four mutually contradictory statements.

Do you want me to go into artificial sweeteners, pardner? I didn't think so.

This country is goin' nuts.

Dwain said:

How do we KNOW the cashier was athorized to OK you stealin-er buying the bottles? He/She could possibly even have made the sign themselves. 6$ for a 5 gal. jug seems pretty suspicious to me. We should alert the Moral Police. - Dwain

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I emailed the local Culligan distributor to make sure. Joke all you want, morality is actually pretty important to me.

Just because something is marked #7 does not mean its made from polycarbonate the designation #7 means all other plastics not found in the other 6 classes.


I really dont want Bisphenol A in my beer it has been suggested that at lower PH levels Bisphenol A can leach into the medium that is stored inside . Spring water is usually around 7ph Beer is much lower and using Starsan would even lower that during sanitizing .

Harvard school of public health study

"A new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that participants who drank for a week from polycarbonate bottles -- the popular, hard-plastic drinking bottles and baby bottles -- showed a two-thirds increase in their urine of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA). Exposure to BPA, used in the manufacture of polycarbonate and other plastics, has been shown to interfere with reproductive development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans."


Harvard

You drink relatively neutral H2O out of a #7 container. You don't drink alcohol out of them, with its attendant acidity and the fermentation time when that acid was leaching stuff out of the plastic. There is a big difference.

Good ideas here. I really don't know what the problem is with assuming the deposit is a purchase. I guess it goes back to the keggle argument but we're talking a plastic bottle here not a keg.

OMG! Do I really own the glass bottles that I get with my Sam's? I'm sure the $.05 deposit isn't enough to cover the cost of the bottle. Guess I'll have to keg just to make sure I'm legal.

Edit: on a more serious note. Unless I sign a contract stating that they own the *insert container* and are just leasing it to me then I own the item.

jkpq45,
I thought you started this thread as a joke.

So, since we had soooo much fun with my Sanke keg thread, let's see how the community feels about this one....Discuss if you dare....-jkpq45

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Joke all you want, morality is actually pretty important to me.

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I would not presume to judge anyone's morality based on a written conversation on a bulletin board. Especially someone I don't even know. If you read my comments on the keg post, you know what my thoughts are.
To quote myself from another post about keeping kegs,

At the end of the day, this is a home brew board, not a moral compass. Do what you're comfortable with and move on. Luck - Dwain

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Well Dwain, you're right about at least one thing. Someone's morals should be guided by more than what they find online.

FWIW, here's one message to a local Culligan distributor. After clarifying my question by saying:

jkpq45 said:

Thank you for responding so quickly. I'm actually considering using the bottle for other uses, modifying it for personal projects, etc. I'd not undergo such activities if the bottle still belongs to Culligan and I'm just "renting" it. Please advise whether I've purchased the bottle or just rented it.

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Culligan customer service responds:

Culligan said:

you own the bottle-do what every you like with it

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While her "customer service" leaves a bit to be decided, it's settled the issue of "whose bottle is this" for me.

Keep in mind that if you use these bottles as fermenters, you're not really defacing them. You could potentially clean it up and return them.

Now if the same thing were true for a Sanke and you weren't cutting the tops off and the could be used for the original purpose, there wouldn't be an issue, would there?

jkpq45 said:

Well Dwain, you're right about at least one thing. Someone's morals should be guided by more than what they find online.

FWIW, here's one message to a local Culligan distributor. After clarifying my question by saying:



Culligan customer service responds:



While her "customer service" leaves a bit to be decided, it's settled the issue of "whose bottle is this" for me.

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What is wrong with the customer service?