Posts tagged "soda water"

How can I reuse or recycle flat soda water or flat tonic water?

We’ve had an email from Ellie:

I’ve found about half a dozen opened bottles of soda water and tonic water in the back of our drinks cupboard from last Christmas (I don’t know why there is so many!) They’re flat now but I know you can use soda water for stain removal so I wondered if you knew of any ways I can use them up.

Soda water (aka Club Soda) is a useful stain remover for liquid spills but I’ve heard that part of it is how the fizz “lifts” the stain – so I’m not sure it’ll be still as useful for that.

Some sources recommend soda water as a mineral-rich water for plants – flat stuff would still work for that – or, similarly, tonic water can help keep cut flowers fresh (used one part tonic to two parts tap water).

One other thing about tonic water – the quinine in it causes it to glow in the dark. We’ve obviously missed Halloween now but it lend itself to some fun decoration ideas…

Any other ideas for how to use up those fizz-less drinks?

What’s the greenest way to get/make sparkling water?

We’ve had an email from Jennifer asking:

I was on the verge of buying a soda siphon to make my own sparkling water at home – surely much more ecologically sound than buying bottled sparkling water, right? But my husband raised a concern about the used CO2 cartridges? Are they recyclable?

A not-so-quick Google around suggests that they’re metal (typically steel) so can be recycled with normal metal recycling. Anyone know for sure?

When we posted about water filter cartridges three years ago (cor! that’s ages!), we had a number of people making reuse suggestions – how to clean them to get more life out of the filters – are there any tricks like that for soda syphon cartridges?

Even if they couldn’t be reused or recycled though, it still might be worth considering the syphon route because of the amount of energy wasted shipping heavy bottles of water around the place.

Any other suggestions?