Best water bottle for your car. The #1 choice for best tasting water.

What the best water bottle for your car? In November 2015 when this post was first written, it was over 40°C which didn't let up until around 8pm at night. For the first time that year, all the coconut oil in the warehouse was melted down to the bottom of the jar. It usually just got a little melty on the top and then went solid again. At the time, I was keeping bpa free plastic bottles in my car to drink from. Now I don't have an issue with drinking from bpa free plastic normally, but I did in that heat. When I got in my car at the end of work I grabbed my water bottle to take a drink. I have never noticed the taste of the plastic leaching in to the water before. The really hot day was different. I could taste the plastic. It was this day that I stopped using plastic water bottles in the car.

At 5.30pm, the temperature outside was reading as 42°C, I can only imagine what it was like inside the car. It was like it for at least 6 hours. When I took a sip from my bottle, it was hot enough to make tea from, and I could taste the difference in the water. For the first time, I could taste something leaching in to the water from my drink bottle. Needless to say, one sip was all I took and I went back inside for a refill before driving home. While this has never happened before, the extreme temperature and sheer length of time has made a difference in this instance. Because of this, I switched over to a glass water bottle for my car. Fast forward today, finding glass water bottles with drinking straws isn't an easy find, so we have rewritten this blog to give you a run down on the best water bottles for your car below, but first we'll talk about when using bpa free water bottles is still a great choice.

So when are BPA Free bottles ok?

If you are ok with the use of bpa free plastics, there are still times that they're not the best choice. You can use this information below to make an informed choice about when to use them and when to use an alternative. From my own personal experience and speaking to industry experts, the use of bpa free plastics is best done when there are no extremes of temperature involved.

• No dishwashers
• No hot cars for extended periods of time
• No hot sun all day at the beach (without insulation)
• No freezers

If you're going for a walk and you don't want to carry a heavier stainless steel or glass water bottle, bpa free plastic is great. If you want to send your kids to school with one and you know they're not going to have it out in extreme heat all day, that's great too. Taking a short trip in your car, fine. A long trip in winter, fine too. Just watch extended periods of extreme heat. I take mine to the gym.

Of course, if you decide that bpa free plastics aren't what you want for your family, that's fine too. You can always choose glass or stainless steel as an alternative, and now we'll go through some of our favourite choices for bpa free plastic water bottle alternatives.

Glass Water Bottles

One of the best water bottles in the car for purity of taste is a glass water bottle. You can be limited by the size of your cup holder though, so be sure to measure. There are also fewer lid options in glass water bottles.

At the moment, all our glass water bottle choices have screw lids, so to drink from them, you need to take the lid off. They're available in sizes from 410ml through to 1 litre. You do need to unscrew it and then screw it back on when you're done. If you're a 'drive and sip' kind of person, then you'll want something with a straw to drink from and you'll be best to swap to stainless steel where the lid choices are better.

EcoVessel and Camelbak both used to make straw lids for glass bottles when we originally wrote this post. Neither are available now in 2023, but we have it in stainless steel

Insulated Stainless Steel Water Bottles for the car

The third option is always stainless steel, and it's the #1 choice for many. All the stainless steel bottles in our store are made from food grade stainless steel. Any plastic sports or sippy lids are bpa free. Klean Kanteen have options available where the screw lids are all stainless steel (and they're always available as an additional purchase for the Classic series bottles.

Want your drink to stay cool all day in the car? Then stainless steel is your only option because you'll need a bottle that is vacuum insulated. If this is what you need, then an insulated water bottle is the thing you need. The Thermos brand are the first that most people think of in this arena. They're certainly not the only choice though.

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Now that you have all this information, just remember, stress is toxic too. At Shop Naturally, we're not obsessively strict about anything. We're all about helping you REDUCE the toxic load in your life. The level to which you choose to do this is totally up to you. We believe in offering sensible information without the 'fear factor' and letting our savvy customers decide what's best for them. All the information above about how to use bpa free plastics is also applicable to your lunch boxes, although, for most people, if they're in the heat all day, they're in an insulated lunch bag to prevent food spoilage. Still, if you have something in a plastic lunch box that won't go off in the heat, you may still be aware of some taste leaching out when you use them in extremes of heat, and as mentioned above too, they're best washed by hand and not in the dishwasher.

As always, if you have any questions, please let us know and we're more than happy to help.