After reading a recent NPR story about how even plastic without BPA is leaching estrogenic chemicals into whatever it comes in contact with, I was ready to give up plastic water bottles for good. I usually fill a bottle with tap water each night to keep beside my bed for late-night thirst quenching. Time to find a glass bottle – pronto! Well, ask and ye shall receive; yesterday I found a Love Bottle at my favorite local spa. It was exactly what I was looking for. And more, it turns out.

A Love Bottle is a reusable glass water bottle designed to replace the plastic bottles that we carry around and use every day. The idea for Love Bottle was born when a nutrition consultant in San Francisco wanted to find a way to improve the emotional and physical health of our country. As one of our most fundamental needs, water in a great looking, earth-friendly bottle supercharged with a little love seemed the perfect answer to helping many people in a simple and easy way. The next thing she knew she was starting a company. It’s mission is “to spread love, to improve health, to create a canvas for self expression, to help the environment, and to get clean water to people who need it.”

Why Love Bottle? The founder of the company, who calls herself “The Love Bottle Lady,” tells her story:

I’ve been drinking water out of a bottle with the word ”love” on it since 2005, after seeing a picture of a water crystal formed by the word love. Its beauty took my breath away. Intrigued by the photo, I investigated its origins and found that a wonderful man, Mr. Masaru Emoto, has been dedicating his life to the world of water and all it has to teach us. He has spent many years photographing how different words, pictures, songs, and prayers can affect water with its energy. To learn more about his work and to view beautiful water crystals, please visit www.hado.net

After realizing that water is affected by the energy surrounding it, I wanted to charge my water with the energy of love. I started drinking water from a homemade love bottle for a few months and though it was subtle, I could feel a difference when I drank from it. It made me feel good, and it made me want to drink more water. Now, I rarely drink out of anything but a love bottle and will actually search around the house so that I can drink out of my current favorite!

I also started noticing my friends asking for sips from my bottle and my husband “borrowing” my bottle when he came home from work. It made me think that perhaps more people wanted or needed a little love in their water.

I remember reading some time ago about Dr. Emoto and his work with water crystals. That someone would take his knowledge and find a practical way to use it to "put a little love in your water" was mightily engaging to me. The more I read about this company, the more I was, well, in love with it!

The creative in me was drawn to the idea of a water bottle that could be a medium not just for visual expression but for emotional expression as well. Love Bottles come in a variety of designs that are meant to be customized by writing and drawing on them, decorating them with stickers and bands, any way you can think of to make your bottle your own. "This is a place for you to express what you want more of in your life, or what makes you feel good." The idea is that if you feel good when you look at your bottle, you will feel good when you drink from it. Imagine the beautiful crystals that the water in your super-personal, super-charged Love Bottle would create!

And of course, Love Bottle solved my immediate problem of wanting to find a healthier way to drink water since I, like millions of others, do drink water on occasion from plastic bottles (my efforts to use a SIGG bottle at the gym notwithstanding). But I am just one person. Think of this for a moment:

29 billion plastic bottles are used each year in the US alone. 86% of these are not recycled, which means that all of that toxin-leaching plastic is ending up in our landfills and our oceans.

Plastic is petroleum, people. The 17 million barrels of oil used to make those bottles could fuel 100,000 cars for a full year.

And the 100 billion dollars spent globally on plastic water bottles each year could provide clean water for every human on the planet.

Statistically, each person in the US drinks one eight-ounce plastic water bottle a day. By replacing my statistical daily water bottle with a Love Bottle, I'm reducing my personal plastic water bottle consumption by 365 bottles per year (not to mention the money I'd be saving - have you bought a bottle of water at the movies lately?). If 1000 people use a love bottle, plastic bottle consumption would be reduced by 365,000 bottles a year. If 10,000 people use a love bottle we reduce our plastic bottle consumption by 3,650,000 bottles a year. I think you see where this is going. Not to mention all of the happy people we'd have walking around drinking love all day. It would be more than the environment we'd be saving. World peace anyone?

Love Bottle is dedicated not only to caring for the environment by reducing the impact of using plastic water bottles, but to supporting causes that preserve sources of clean water and ensure access to clean water for everyone. A portion of proceeds from each Love Bottle sale goes to Clean Water Action and to Global Water.

Love Bottles are available at all Exhale Spa locations and at many Whole Foods stores, in addition to numerous independent retailers across the country (a list of them is available on the Love Bottle website). You also can order Love Bottles directly from them on the site as well.

So, what will your Love Bottle say?

If I could save love in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do is to save every bit that I’ve ever felt and to give the whole bottle to you. (I think Jim Croce would be okay with that.)