Carrie Frost, a registered nurse and mother of two from Colorado, has an impressive collection of reusable flasks for keeping cold drinks. She estimates that her family has accumulated around 25 to 30 flasks of various sizes, designs, and colors, with and without a straw. However, despite having all these options at hand, she found herself drinking from a $3 plastic water bottle she bought at a local grocery store while sitting in 90-degree heat at her son’s baseball tournament. “Convenience,” she chuckled, trying to make sense of why she neglected her reusable flasks once again. “I guess we’ve become a lazy society.”
Americans are consuming a significant amount of water, but they seem undecided about the best way to stay hydrated. According to Greg Williamson, the president of CamelBak, reusable water bottles sales in the United States exceeded $2 billion in 2022, compared to around $1.5 billion in 2020. Single-serving water bottle sales have also been steadily increasing, reaching 11.3 billion gallons in 2022, as reported by the Beverage Marketing Association.
In other words, consumers are spending billions of dollars every year on reusable bottles to stay hydrated but are still buying bottled water, even though tap water is readily available and free. “Tap?” scoffed Jason Taylor from Georgia, whose son was also participating in the same baseball tournament in Birmingham. “I haven’t drunk from the tap since I was 18.” He cited concerns about tainted water, like in Flint, Michigan, and admitted to not trusting the tap water at the hotel. Instead, he filled his reusable flask with hotel ice, which he believed to be safe, and poured bottled water over it. Hotel ice was trustworthy, but not the faucet water.
Beverage consumption habits are in flux. Americans are moving away from sugary drinks but still rely on the convenience of chilled plastic bottles from corner-store fridges. As a result, we are accumulating both single-use and reusable containers in our kitchen cabinets and landfills.
According to sustainability consultant Jessica Heiges, sales of reusable water bottles are skyrocketing. However, people who choose to fill their reusable flasks with bottled water haven’t fully embraced the environmental benefits. “They are not all the way there or are not fully convinced,” noted Dr. Heiges. Moreover, since reusable water bottles require resources to manufacture, having too many of them is not ideal for the environment. “You can find them at every Goodwill and Salvation Army. People are overflowing with them.”
Alaina Waldrop from Birmingham confessed to having about 20 water bottles in her possession, which she considered as valuable as purses. She explained, “You have a decent water bottle, but you get sick of it or you’re used to seeing it all the time, and find a new one that’s pretty or it’s a new color or holds more water or fits in a cup holder better.” Despite this affinity for water bottles, she tends to fill them at home with filtered water but is wary of using faucets on the go. Consequently, she buys single-serving bottles at gas stations or convenience stores and pours the water into her reusable container. “I drink whatever is in the plastic and then I throw the plastic away,” she laughed. When asked why she doesn’t simply drink all the water from the plastic bottle she just purchased, she cited the shorter duration of the coldness. “It doesn’t stay cold for as long,” she explained.
In practice, there is often little difference in quality or safety between bottled water and tap water, according to Ronnie Levin, an instructor and expert in American public drinking water at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It’s often just some random tap filling those water bottles,” said Levin. “Monitoring of bottled water is somewhere between zero and not routine.” When pouring bottled water into a flask, “you’re not necessarily getting anything better, except that you’re now polluting the environment.”
At the baseball fields, a line formed at a snack shack selling water for $3 and charging $2 for ice in a Styrofoam cup. Just a few steps away, a refillable filtered-water tap stood unused, without a line. Perhaps it was because the filtered tap provided free water.
Water has become so popular that its price often rivals or surpasses that of soda, despite offering less substance in the form of sugar. Prices for water and soda were neck and neck at a handful of nearby convenience stores, and even at Walgreens, where Dr Pepper and other sodas sold for $4 for two, so did Dasani and Aquafina water bottles.
According to Michael Bellas, chairman and CEO of the Beverage Marketing Company, buying bottled water in bulk, such as from Costco or a supermarket, remains significantly cheaper. However, prices spike for single-serving bottles when retailers cater to customers on the go. “The airports just soak you,” Bellas remarked.
At the Hudson store in Birmingham airport, 20-ounce bottles of Dasani water and Smartwater (both owned by the Coca-Cola Company) cost $4.29 with tax, while all the 20-ounce sodas (Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Sprite) cost $4.09. Kim Shoemaker, a Hudson employee, explained that everyone needs to stay hydrated, and people believe water makes their skin look nice. “No sugar, no chemicals, no additives,” she emphasized. Shoemaker, who bought cases of water at Costco and kept single-serving bottles in every room of her home, also owned several reusable flasks she didn’t use. When asked why, she couldn’t explain it. “Oh, my gosh, probably about six,” she estimated. “I don’t use them. I don’t know why.”
Just outside the Hudson store, a water dispenser for reusable containers, offering filtered water free of charge, went mostly untouched. On the baseball fields, Carrie Frost, who had traveled from Colorado for the tournament, mentioned that some family members didn’t understand why people would spend money on reusable water containers and single-serving bottles instead of simply filling a cup from the tap. “Ask my husband,” she suggested. “He thinks it’s the stupidest thing in the world.” Her husband, Spencer Frost, grumbled, “Just drink from the hose.”
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