We drink a lot of water in my household. We used to drink lime-flavored bottled sparkling water. Which I would purchase, a case at a time, every other week. And I was getting sick of it. Sick of all of the bottles (which we recycled, but still) and sick of transporting the large cases of waters from the store.

It seemed quite wasteful, especially considering all of the half-empty bottles we’d recycle at the end of the week. I didn’t see an end to our bad habit until I saw a soda water machine in action at “High Heels and Hammers”, a local hardware store event for women. It’s a SodaStream, which totally sounds like a late-night- made-for-TV-home-shopping product. And maybe it is, but I saw some potential and a way of getting around those cases of water. It took the guy less than 30 seconds to make sparkling water, and it tasted just like the $1.29/bottle stuff I was buying at the store. And so, it became the answer to my bottled water problem.

The water carbonator requires no electricity and promises about 6-8 weeks worth of soda water, depending on your weekly sparkling water consumption. It sits in a tiny corner of my kitchen allowing me to make sparkling water anytime. I usually just drink some bubbly with a twist of lemon. This is a good solution for now, but it’s not perfect. But it beats buying nearly 300 bottles of water a year.