Save Money & Waste with a Home Soda Maker

Soda: it’s one of the hardest junk foods to give up.  I started cleaning up my diet years ago in an attempt to cut way back on processed foods, choosing whole foods instead whenever possible, but Diet Coke is the one thing I keep going back to.  I can’t explain why this gross, chemical-laden brown bubbly substance is so attractive, but it is.  I’m not alone – the average American consumes 43,371 cans of soda over 77 years.  Mindboggling, especially when you consider all the waste from those cans and bottles that end up in landfills.

There’s hope for us yet. This strange penguin-shaped countertop gadget actually lets you make your own soda, and control exactly what goes into it.  The Penguin has a carbonator, a carafe and a few manual pumps that turn plain water into seltzer or soda.  You can control the level of carbonation, and exactly what goes into it – plus, it doesn’t use electricity.
It might seem at first like just another piece of junk for your house, and the price is a bit steep, but it would be great to have one less thing you had to buy every week at the grocery store, plus you could reuse a couple of containers over and over.

The Nibble has a breakdown of how the Penguin works.  It’s really pretty simple!

Link [The Nibble] via [EcoSalon]