Originally Posted By: OldBaldGuy
That's probably it. The number in the triangle indicates how often you should reuse the container. Lots of high dollar water jugs have really lousy numbers. Which it probably the reason that Nalgene has dropped their line of polycarb bottles, they had a bad number. . . .
Brrr, no credit. The number is supposedly a code for recycling with some numbers good and some not-so-good for recycling. High Density Polyethylene "2" is supposedly food grade plastic (Tupperware, et al). These can be reused many more times than the number indicates.

Polycarbonate gets a "7" (All other resins and multi-materials). I'm not sure there is a problem with polycarbonate bottles (such as the now retired Nalgene bottles) as long as you only fill them with cold water. I still use mine, but all I ever used them for was cold water. Because of that I never use anything stronger than mild dish soap to clean them. One issue in some of the tests was the use of sodium hypochlorite bleach to clean polycarbonate which allowed the release of bisphenol-A. Cold water, no chemicals, no problem IMO.

That said, the only material commonly found in camping bottles/cookware I fully trust is titanium -- non-reactive with just about anything. Even some stainless steel is known to leach into liquid (that metallic taste you're familiar with).
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Okay, what’s your point??