BPA and SIGG water bottle exchange programme (ends 31 Oct)

mariaaaa

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this but as MoneySavingExpert is about consumer rights as well as saving money and buying/using reusable water bottles is seen by many as a "green" thing to do I thought people on this board might like to know about this, especially that this has received little media attention in the UK (I only found out about it yesterday from some American blogs).

So the CEO of SIGG revealed last month that SIGG bottles made prior to August 2008 had liners that contain BPA, a chemical that has been linked to various health concerns (bottles made after that date have a new BPA-free liner). BPA can be found in plastic bottles and food cans etc but there had been this widely held mis-perception that SIGG bottles are BPA-free, and apparently SIGG never corrected it until last month. Needless to say this caused some upset and resentment. To this end SIGG stressed that their old bottles do not leach BPA into liquids, and introduced a voluntary exchange programe whereby people can post their old SIGG bottles back in exchange for a new BPA-free one.

To find out if your SIGG bottle has new or old liner, go to: Sigg's website and search for "liner" (sorry as a new user I'm not allowed to post any weblink here...)

As the SIGG website only has info on exchange programmes in the U.S. and Canada I emailed them to ask and found that they do have an exchange programe in the UK as well. I'm pasting their reply below in case other people want to post their bottle back for a new one.

Sigg's reply to my enquiry about the exchange programme:

"As for your question about the “Voluntary Exchange Program”, yes we do offer such a program. If you have a concern with BPA, even in non-leaching SIGG bottles, we request that you ship your bottles back to us before the end of October 09 (postage date) and upon receipt, we will ship you new bottles with the BPA Free, Eco-Care liner. We cannot confirm what exchange bottle you will receive but we will try replace your bottle with the nearest equivalent we can in terms of size, design and availability.

It can not be exchanged at the POS where you bought it (Blacks)

SIGG UK, 575-599 Maxted Road, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 7ED

Please be advised that this program is voluntary (not a recall) as all of our SIGG bottles – old and new liner – completely comply with all international safety guidelines."

I also rang them up to clarify that the "End of October" condition applies to the shipping not the receipt date (given the whole postal strike mess) and they said it's not a problem as long as I post it out by the end of Oct, especially that I'd approached them before. So I would suggest emailing/ringing the UK office to check this if you want to post your bottle back to exchange for a new BPA-free one.

As a new user I'm not allowed to post any weblink to newspaper articles etc but if you would like to read more about the whole SIGG and BPA controversy there are reports on TIME, MallenBaker.net (a corporate social responsibility site) and Huffingtonpost that you can access from their websites.

Hope this helps!