Cirkul
Secret about me: I hate water. I mean, I love water, but I hate drinking it. I'm a water snob and I can taste everything in it. Where I live, we have well water and I can't stand it... The smell, the taste, the color. I have a reverse osmosis system in the house and all drinking water goes through separate filters after the osmosis too. Brita has become my BFF. City water isn't any better and tastes like bleach to me- so we get the same issue all over again. Hello, Brita.
Bottled water is wasteful and I am not a fan of that either. I've only found a few brands that I can palette. I've tried and tried, but I just don't crave the taste of water. Knowing that I have to drink more water, despite my lack of interest in it; over the last several years I've taken to carrying a water bottle everywhere with me. I've thrown fruit in every chance I get. I also forget my bottle in the car, the gym bag, forget to wash it before I need it again, etc. Fruit isn't so fruity after a day in the hot car and it's a bitch to clean out the bottle afterward. There are other options for flavor, including a litany of flavored packets on the market- Crystal Light is one example. I started drinking those (with caffeine) when I cut back on my coffee intake. That's all fine and good until you look at the ingredients. At some point you begin to realize that you're drinking water to be MORE healthy... not to grow cancer quicker because of what you're putting IN the water. So I started looking for other options. TrueLemon (one of my favorite companies ever) makes crystalized juice packets with no added junk and now they offer energy options too. Not all stores offer them and the brand is still pretty hard to find up here. I have to go to their website, deal with minimum orders for free shipping, etc. It's a hassle and I'm lazy to have to go looking for it. In my quest to continue with better drinking habits, I discovered this new company called Cirkul. Cirkul is a water bottle system that infuses flavor ON DEMAND into your drinking water. What do I mean when I say "on demand"? I'll explain: Take a standard reusable wide mouth bottle. See the cap? Cirkul's uses the same kind of screw cap, except theirs has a hole in the top that the Cirkul cartridge fits and screws into. The cartridge has a spout on the top to drink from, (just like any other sport bottle) and just beneath the spout is a dial. From X (which is zero- pure water) to O (10, full flavor) you can turn the dial to release just as much flavor as you'd like. Flavor, or not. On demand. Each cartridge is good for about four 20oz bottles of water if your settings are kept at about 4. With the setting lower, you'll get longer use. Higher, less use. The company claims this system reduces landfill waste. I assume if you're comparing it to bottled water or flavored beverage waste, then sure. But for those of us that are accustomed to tiny little pouches of powder to drop in our permanent water bottles, then no. This is the opposite of reducing waste but I see their point. But the cartridges are #5 plastic and are recyclable too. Another benefit to the system is- because only pure water goes in the bottle and it never mixes with anything that touches the bottle, there's less to clean. The spout is attached to the cartridge, so you're tossing out the messy part every 80 oz or so. The downsides here are that these things aren't cheap. Sure, they are significantly cheaper than bottled beverages, yes. But as compared to the packets, a box of 10 Crystal Light single serve packets retails for about $2.99 at full price- you're getting a bottle for about 30 cents. Get them on sale or buy the generic brand, and you're looking at about 15 cents a packet. Cirkul's is about 85 cents a 20 oz bottle- IF YOU DRINK AT THE MIDDLE NUMBER. If you're cranking it to 10, you're getting about 40 oz per cartridge... so that's about $1.50 a bottle. The creators came up with this product as an option for more water intake because they were student athletes. One was a bottled beverage guy and the other was a powdered drink fan. Neither of those ways were better than the other- one was expensive and the other was messy. So Cirkul got together aimed to alleviate those issues with one product. For that purpose, I can absolutely see the benefit of this product. For those of you that are wondering like I did, at this time the cartridges don't actually filter water- they simply infuse flavor but the company's FAQ page claims that this is something they are investigating. As far as the flavors and product offering goes- there are quite a few options to pick from: LifeSips offer B-vitamins and either stevia or sucralose as sweeteners. (flavors have either/or but they don't have one flavor and then the option of stevia or sucralose. You either pick the one flavor with stevia or you get sucralose.) FitSips have electrolytes. (Again with the sucralose or stevia option.) GoSips have caffeine. PureSips are flavor only with no added sweeteners. TeaSips are tea and flavor. (Sucralose, and natural amounts of caffeine from the tea) ALL of the flavor and sweetening options are colorless and calorie free.
I like unsweetened water, and I'm a sucker for lemon wedges added in. HOWEVER, I was not a fan of the unsweetened lemon sips at first. Normally, I like a lot of lemon in my water, but I noticed that if I turned up the flavor- it tasted like the lemon juice you buy in the bottle at the grocery store...or floor cleaner. But I found that it was enjoyable for me at setting 2-3. It's definitely different than the other options on the market. My husband's bottle was filled with the Raspberry flavor (also unsweetened) and it was much more enjoyable at a higher setting than the lemon was. I wouldn't say that I won't buy the lemon again, I got used to it very quickly once I figured out that the lemon is extremely pungent and that I preferred a much lower setting. I'm looking forward to trying all the other flavors I ordered too. My biggest issue with this product is that I don't think you can open the cartridges and then not finish them and get another flavor. I'm pretty non-committal and I bounce through flavors throughout the day. Sometimes I want caffeine, sometimes I don't. So that's going to be a challenge for me to finish one cartridge at a time. I *suppose* you can pull the cartridge out and put it in a cup or something to swap out through the day, but that seems excessive and messy. The cartridges drip water and once they're out of the packet, you don't know what the flavor is because they aren't labeled. I'll have to figure out what I'm going to do for my morning caffeine fix in the meantime... But I think I'll stick to Cirkul for a while. I do see the opportunity here for this product and I think it will serve my family well. I don't let the kids have the packets of junk that I've drank, but they do want me to bring (or worse, stop off at a gas station) bottles of juice whenever we leave the house. I really like the reduced bottle waste, the lack of needing to clean and scrub the nozzle of the bottle, and no sticky residue inside the bottles. This could be a good option for all of us.
The best part of this system for me is that the creators thought enough to make the lid interchangeable with other wide mouthed bottles out there. So this lid and system will fit on any wide mouthed bottle you might have. (they also sell JUST the cover, so you can use your favorite bottle with the Cirkul system and not have to buy a whole bottle) I also like the auto-shipped packet option. The price per serving then works out to about 62 cents. You save a little money that way, and with my code CHILL10, you save a bit more on your order- making your cost per serving about 50 cents.
To get started, use my link to get your starter kit (bottle and 2 sips packs) for $5. Then use the code I provided above to save money on the refills. That code takes $5 off your auto ship costs too! (Or if you order a bundle- bottle and 4 sips packs- instead of $20, you only pay $18) HERE is my link to get your bottle and starter pack. For the $5 to try it- it's DEFINITELY worth giving it a shot- if not just for the reusable bottle.