SIGG made headlines when it announced that it had stopped producing aluminum water bottles with a lining that contained BPA. But they weren't the kind of headlines it wanted. Many consumers had already believed that SIGG bottles were BPA-free, and despite the lack of such explicit language in the official statements made from SIGG's highest levels, there is some evidence this care may not have been taken at all levels of the organization, or among retailers.

SIGG Switzerland CEO Steve Wasik, an American who held posts at Chanel and other lifestyle brands prior to joining SIGG as the General Manager of SIGG USA in 2006, has been under fire in the blogosphere and is now garnering some mainstream media attention as well. Our own assessments of SIGG's actions have been harsh, and we were interested in hearing the company's top official explain its actions, so we emailed a list of ten questions to Wasik as we gathered information for our stories. He graciously responded with an offer of a phone interview. What follows is a near-complete transcript of that conversation.

ZRecs: When did you first learn that there was BPA in the lining of SIGG bottles?

Steve Wasik: When I met with suppliers back in the summer of 2006 [as General Manager of SIGG USA], I learned about BPA in the liner. I was reassured that there was no leaching, but I knew at the time that if we could remove the BPA, we should do it. And I sat down with the CEO at the time and said, "Let’s develop a new liner."

One of our objectives was to remove BPA so consumers could have confidence in our product; the other issue we wanted was to be able to speak more transparently about the ingredients of the formula. The reality was that we did not own the formula and the agreement that was in place before I got there was that we would not speak about it. So we began by doing leach testing. But we also wanted to develop a solution that was more environmentally friendly. We developed this whole new process that is powder based.

Most water-based epoxy coatings contain VOCs so as you're spraying it they're kind of released into the air. Not good for your carbon footprint. So as we started developing the brand image back in 2005 we said, we are a Swiss company, we should start being eco-minded, and when we walked through the factory, we said, we could probably do better there. It's a whole new process. If any of the powder is sprayed outside of the bottle it's captured by a vacuum and recirculates. No fumes going into the air.

ZRecs: Why did the suppliers tell you about the BPA in the liner at that point?

Wasik: I asked. I wanted to know more about the formula. I basically did not want to take "No, we will not tell you" as an answer, which is what my predecessor had heard. I demanded a meeting with the supplier and said I have to know what is in the formula. They said look this agreement precedes you, but the fact that I knew there was BPA in there I said now was the time. And it didn’t take me long to convince the CEO and the board.

ZRecs: So you met with them and said that it was not enough for you that they had this agreement, but they still would not provide you with the formula?

Wasik: I said point blank you have to tell me what is in this. They told me at that time [that there was BPA in it] but were not providing us with an ingredient list.

ZRecs: We've read in some of your statements that you chose to "honor the agreement" by keeping the ingredients of the liner private until your recent announcement. But we've also read at least one statement from SIGG in an email to a customer that seemed to claim that the company did not know about the BPA. The email, which was published on the blog Light Green Stairs, read: "I understand where you are coming from. Fact is SIGG did not manufacture the old liner, it was provided to us by a third party that would not disclose the ingredient list, only testing that assured no leaching of BPA or ANYTHING else into any beverage poured into a SIGG. Several tests were conducted in Europe and the US to make sure of it. And we paid to have one too!" Isn't this saying that SIGG didn't know there was BPA in the liner?

Wasik: I think I know where that confusion may have come from. We knew there was BPA in the liner, but they would never give us the formula.

ZRecs: We've had some confusion about the timing of your shift to the BPA-free EcoCare liner. When did you convert your factories to test and begin production of bottles with the new liner?

Wasik: The conversion took place in July and August. We shut down factory for 4 to 6 weeks. The [product] category was growing tremendously and it was a difficult time to shut down the factory, but we knew it was the right thing to do and we wanted to get into the new liner as quickly as possible.

If we didn’t own our own factories, it would have been a lot easier. But when you do, you have to work with machine manufacturers and suppliers and since we purchase our own equipment you unfortunately can't do that so quickly.

ZRecs: When did you stop manufacturing bottles with the BPA-free liner?

Wasik: We tried to build up some stock raw bodies that are undecorated. So there's two sides of our company. One side is turning it into a finished assembled bottle and the other is the decorating side - the painting. We tried to keep up some stock so we could keep the workers working. [In a statement in a follow-up phone call, Wasik stated that "this project never really got off the ground," and maintained that few bottles were actually stockpiled.]

ZRecs: When did you stop shipping bottles with the BPA-containing liner from Switzerland?

Wasik: We stopped shipping the old bottles out of Switzerland in December 2008. In the U.S., we had bottles that were the old liner and we never did a recall, we consider the bottles to be safe, so yes there are still bottles that are at retail and that were in our warehouse. All of the ones on the MySIGG line are the new liner. What we can’t control as much is what the retailers do.

ZRecs: Do you still have any more bottles with BPA in SIGG's U.S. warehouses?

Wasik: We only have one warehouse and we aren't sending out any more with the old liner. [Follow-up: Wasik explained in a subsequent phone call that after the public outcry following its announcement, it had decided to stop selling the remaining stock from its U.S. warehouse that used the old liner. Wasik could not provide detailed numbers of the bottles that would be recycled, but said it was "millions of dollars worth."]

ZRecs: When did you begin shipping bottles with the EcoCare liner?

Wasik: At the end of August or the beginning of September 2008. Typically it takes a month to get to the U.S. and then warehouse to stores. They could have been sold as early as October.

ZRecs: What date did you publish your statement about the liner change to the MySIGG website?

Wasik: On August 14 [2009].

ZRecs: You mentioned in April 2008 that you were choosing to "honor the agreement" with your liner supplier by not discussing ingredients in the liner. When did you feel that you were no longer bound by this agreement?

Wasik: In my view we stopped being bound to it in January 2009. We didn't come out and say exactly what we're saying now, and we should have have said it in January. If we had it to do all over again, we would have. It was my mistake to basically not understand that consumers were interested in the mere presence of BPA rather than just "Is it a leach-free bottle." That was a miscalculation on my part. When consumers write into us, we're basically saying, "We should have handled this better and we should have been more clear in our communications."

ZRecs: Do you have plans to test your new liner for BPA on an ongoing basis?

Wasik: The new liner has been certified in powder form. We also have asked our supplier to test every time they make a batch.

ZRecs: Do any SIGG products still use the older BPA-containing liner? Your food tins, mugs?

Wasik: No. The old liner is gone.

ZRecs: How does the cost of the new liner compare with the old one?

Wasik: I was told that the new powder was going to cost us ten times as much as the old liner. It wasn't just the cost of the $1M piece of equipment but the ongoing cost of goods. But we decided it was the right thing to do. We also know it differentiated us from the Chinese suppliers out there who are maybe using low-cost, off the shelf epoxies.

ZRecs: Readers have been sending us complaints and photographs of bottles with the new liner that have coating chipping from the lip of EcoCare-lined SIGG bottles. Did you have initial problems with the new liner, even after your initial testing, when you began producing bottles and distributing them to be sold?

Wasik: We had some trouble at the beginning - there was a learning curve. We found out that they looked great going out but as a Swiss company you want to make every bottle perfectly. Some customers have come back to us and said the mouth of the bottle is peeling away. We would take back their bottles and give them a new bottle, and what we found was that in the early weeks of the production the sprayer was spraying too much liner in the lip. Because it was too thick, it would cause the liner to peel away. That took some adjusting, but we're pretty confident we got it right now. It’s a process. We definitely tweak it here or there. But I think compared to other manufacturers we still have fewer returns than anybody.

ZRecs: And I assume that exchanges of bottles with the EcoCare liner, based on this problem, are not subject to the return shipping policy you require for replacement of the old SIGG bottles?

Wasik. Correct.

More on this story

• SIGG's BPA Confession


• Two warnings before you request a replacement SIGG bottle


• The ZRecs 2009 BPA-Free Water Bottle Showdown


• ZRecs evidence of misleading statements by SIGG representatives


• BPA researcher claims older SIGGs did leach BPA, and we can independently confirm it