Carrie Frost, a registered nurse and mother of two from Colorado, admits to having a large collection of reusable flasks at home, accumulating “upward of 25 to 30”. Despite this, she found herself drinking from a $3 plastic water bottle purchased from a local grocery store during her son’s baseball tournament last month. She jokingly attributes this to society’s laziness.
The United States has seen a significant increase in the sales of both reusable water bottles, surpassing $2 billion in 2022, and single-serving water bottles, reaching 11.3 billion gallons according to the Beverage Marketing Association. This shows that consumers are spending billions on reusable bottles and then purchasing bottled water regardless, even though tap water is freely available.
Concerns about the safety and quality of tap water were raised by Jason Taylor from Georgia, who filled his reusable flask with ice from the hotel and poured bottled water over it due to his distrust of faucet water. He mentioned incidents like the tainted water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as a reason for his skepticism.
Americans are transitioning away from sugary drinks but still desire the convenience of chilled water from plastic bottles sold at corner stores. As a result, people are accumulating both single-use and reusable containers in their cabinets and landfills. Sales of reusable water bottles are skyrocketing, according to sustainability consultant Jessica Heiges, but she notes that people who fill these flasks with bottled water have not fully embraced the environmental aspect. Having an excess of reusable bottles is also not ideal for the environment, as evidenced by the surplus found in thrift stores.
Alaina Waldrop from Birmingham owns around 20 water bottles, treating them as valuable as purses. She explains that people often get tired of using the same water bottle and are enticed by new designs or features. Alaina tends to fill her bottles with filtered water at home but buys single-serving bottles when on the go, pouring the water into her reusable container.
In reality, there may not be much difference in quality or safety between bottled and tap water, as highlighted by Ronnie Levin, an instructor in public health at Harvard. Bottled water often comes from random taps, and monitoring its quality is not routine. Pouring bottled water into a flask ultimately contributes to pollution without necessarily providing any extra benefits.
At the baseball fields, a snack shack sold water for $3 and charged $2 for ice, while a nearby refillable filtered-water tap, free to use, had little to no line. Water prices have risen to the point where they are often as expensive as soda, despite having fewer ingredients. Convenience stores set similar prices for water and soda, but prices increase significantly for single-serving bottles in locations where people are desperate for hydration, such as airports.
Kim Shoemaker, an employee at a Hudson store, pointed out that water is popular because it is seen as healthier with no sugar, chemicals, or additives. She buys cases of water at Costco and keeps single-serving bottles in every room of her house, although she also owns several reusable flasks that she rarely uses. A nearby water dispenser for reusable containers goes largely unused.
Carrie Frost’s husband fails to understand the need for both reusable flasks and single-serving water bottles, suggesting the simple solution of drinking from the hose.