>>polyethylene seems to get bumpy with abrasion and develop pinholes pretty easily.<<<br><br>Yes, this is not the perfect material by any stretch. The ziplock I happened to be testing yesterday was a particularly tough variety. I don't have the exact product name handy (sorry). There is certainly a lot of variation in thicknesses and strengths and some would be lousy while others might be better than that. In any case, in directly comparing the ziplock I had in my hand and the oven bag I had in my hand, I felt the ziplock was holding up better and I would have more confidence in actually using it in the field. Just my impressions and not a real field test, but both would be usable.<br><br>>>Well, in trying to use a ziplock style bag in small kits, I haven’t been pleased with the “zipper” part<<<br><br>Yes, that's the problem in packing them and certainly the oven bag is going to avoid that problem and get smaller, too. It boils down to how much space you have, and like I said, I would use the oven bag if that last little bit of space were crucial, which it would be in a wallet or an Altoids tin.<br><br>I wasn't intending to dismiss the oven bag in my post above, but I thought it would be helpful to compare it to something that most people are very familiar with and which is also a pretty good solution to this problem. <br><br>The set-up I currently am using is probably a bit different than what most people are using. The core of my kit is a micro kit with no purification means and no water container in order to keep the size/weight to a minimum (it's 1.1 oz.). I haven't gotten one of those neat vials for the Potable Aqua, so I have mine in the original bottle which I carry separate from the micro-kit. The ziplock I carry is rolled up, starting at the zipper edge so the zipper is inside, making a long, thin tube. I then take the "tube" and wrap it around the bottle from top to bottom (not around the circumference like you would expect). This combination of Potable Aqua and Ziplock is then slid into a vacuum bag and sealed forming a single unit. I feel like that protects the zipper pretty well and avoids kinking it excessively, but I will be keeping an eye on it over time to make sure. This vacuum-packed unit is carried loose and the size difference between what it is and what it would be with an oven bag is not important to me since the bottle is really the thing that is determining it's bulk. This set-up probably would not work well inside a typical tin where the oven bag would be a better choice.<br><br>This isn't the most compact set-up for water treatment, but I am comfortable with it for now. Some day I might get around to getting a small vial for the Potable Aqua and then I might move that into my micro kit along with an oven bag and twist-tie. But for now the space isn't an issue and I feel a little more confident in the Ziplock. <br><br>Thanks for the discussion!<br><br>