Historically, I had never been much of a pop drinker. I grew up on milk, orange juice, and delicious water (my parents' home has an exceptional well which produces sweet, crisp tasting water.) Occasionally, I'd have a generic diet cola, but generally steered away.

In my adult life, I've mostly continued this save for a slight addiction to energy drinks. There's something about the taste, the fizziness, the vitamins and caffeine that my body craves. They're a great help for workouts as well. The problem is that spending $2 a pop seems expensive and wasteful.

On top of this, I recently picked up a craving for mineral water. Not sure why, but I did. I bought some San Pelligrino from the store and I was hooked.

I saw somebody, somewhere post on Twitter about this SodaStream thing, and I was intrigued--a home carbonation system? Sweet! When I found out an "energy" syrup was available--with equivalent caffeine but 1/3 the sugar (and no HFCS) I was sold.

The unit costs about $99, with flavor mixes costing about $5 each (a bit more for the energy variety,) it's super easy to use, and takes no electricity. Now, I can have great tasting energy drink, fresh, made from my own filtered water, with no waste of packaging, whenever I want. It was totally worth the money and is one of the best gadgets I have bought in years.

In short, without doing a full review of the device, I will safely tell you that if you like pop or energy drinks, this is a must have--over time, you'll save money and create significantly less waste by using reusable bottles, plus you can adjust the taste and carbonation to your liking.

You can buy the unit online, or do what I did, and buy retail (I got mine at Sears, but it's sold at a lot of different places)

More info here: http://www.sodastream.com