Plastic vs reusable - which is a better water bottle?

Your reusable bottle might not be as planet-friendly as you think…

If you went anywhere in the heatwave you’ll have most certainly heard an announcement to “carry water with you at all times”. Free bottles of water were handed out at stations and on trains and grabbed out of guards’ hands like they were £50 notes.

Don’t get us wrong, we agree that drinking water is good, we also agree with the general consensus that plastic is bad - as humans we use far too much of it and chuck far too much of it in the sea or into landfill.

But lots of big brands have done a very successful job of making you think that buying a matte finish, pastel coloured reusable bottle = you’ve achieved sustainability. The thing is, because we humans love plastic so much, we’ve got quite good at making it, and producing a reusable bottle has a much bigger impact on the planet than producing a plastic alternative.

Making a 300g stainless steel bottle requires 7x as much fossil fuel, releases 14x more greenhouse gases, demands the extraction of 100sx more metal resources and causes 100sx more toxic risk to people and ecosystems than making a 32g plastic bottle.

But, the clue’s in the name, a “reusable” bottle should last forever. Lifecycle assessments show that you need to use your reusable 50 times to make it more environmentally friendly than plastic alternatives. With heatwaves becoming more and more commonplace, that shouldn’t be a problem…

So the super simple tip to think about when buying any thing, if this thing will one day end up in the bin, how many times will I actually use it. Anything under 30, should be a red flag.