Carrie Frost has great equipment for hydration. A registered nurse and mother of two from Colorado, she estimates that her family has accumulated “upwards of 25 to 30” reusable flasks at home for storing cold drinks: flasks that big and small, with different designs and colors, with straws and without . But last month, as he sat in 90-degree heat at his son’s travel baseball tournament, he drank from a plastic water bottle he bought for $3 at a local grocery store.
“Convenience,” he said, laughing, as he tried to piece together why, once again, he wasn’t using one of his many drink containers. “I think we’re a lazy society.”
Americans drink a lot of water, but they are on the fence about how best to do so. More than $2 billion worth of reusable water bottles were sold in the United States in 2022, up from about $1.5 billion in 2020, according to Greg Williamson, the president of CamelBak, a maker of reusable bottles.
And sales of single-serving bottled water also continue to rise, reaching 11.3 billion gallons by 2022, according to the latest data from the Beverage Marketing Association, which tracks beverage sales.
In other words, consumers spend billions of dollars a year on reusable bottles to stay hydrated and then still buy bottled water, even though tap water remains free.
“Faucet?” said Jason Taylor from Georgia, whose son plays in the same Birmingham baseball tournament. “Faucet? I haven’t had a drink from the tap since I was 18.” He’d heard stories of rotten water, like in Flint, Mich., and didn’t trust the hotel’s tap water, he said, so he filled his reusable flask with ice from the hotel and poured it with de- bottled water The hotel ice he trusted; the tap water there, not much.
Beverage consumption is in a continuous period. Americans are moving away from the empty calories of sugar but still cling to the comfort of a chilled plastic bottle from the fridge at the corner store. So we collect containers, single-use and reusable, in kitchen cabinets and landfills.
Sales of reusable water bottles are “really on the rise,” says Jessica Heiges, a sustainability consultant based in Berkeley, Calif., where she recently completed a Ph.D. in creating waste-free systems. But, he added, people who fill their reusable flasks with water from a bottle don’t fully embrace the environmental proposition.
“They’re not all the way there or not fully convinced,” says Dr. Heiges. And, he noted, reusable water bottles take resources to produce, so having too many isn’t good for the environment, either. “You see them at every Goodwill and Salvation Army. People are overflowing with them.”
Alaina Waldrop, in Birmingham, has around 20 water bottles, as valuable to her as purses, she said: “You have a decent water bottle and 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 it holds more water or fits better in the cup holder.”
Ms. Waldrop, 20, works at Dick’s Sporting Goods, about a mile from the Birmingham baseball field. The store has multiple displays of reusable flasks, featuring major brands like Yeti and Hydro Flask. A display of Stanley flasks ($45 each) includes a sign: limit four per customer. “They are very popular,” said Ms. Waldrop. “I bought one for my mother and one for my sister. We are all water-bottle freaks. We all have this obsession. I wish it makes more sense but it doesn’t.”
He tends to fill his bottles at home with filtered water but doesn’t trust faucets while traveling, so he buys single-serving bottles at the gas station or convenience store and pours the water. that in his reusable container. “I drink what’s in the plastic and then I throw the plastic away,” he laughs. Why not just drink all the water from the plastic bottle he bought? “It won’t stay cold for long,” he said.
In practice, there may be little difference in quality or safety between bottled water and tap water, says Ronnie Levin, an instructor and expert on America’s public drinking water at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. “Usually it’s just a random faucet filling those water bottles,” Ms. Levine. “Bottled water tracking is somewhere between zero and unusual.”
When putting bottled water in a flask, “you’re not really getting anything better, except now you’re polluting the environment.”
In the baking heat of baseball fields, a line forms at a snack shack that sells water for $3 and charges $2 for ice in a Styrofoam cup. A few steps away was a refillable filtered-water tap that several people used but there was no line. Maybe because the filtered tap is free.
Water has become popular enough that it is often as expensive as or more expensive than soda, despite having less substance – in the form of sugar – to offer. At a handful of nearby convenience stores, the prices of water and soda are neck and neck; at Walgreens, bottles of Dr Pepper and other sodas are on sale for $4 for two, as are bottles of Dasani and Aquafina water.
Michael Bellas, the chairman and chief executive of the Beverage Marketing Company, said that bottled water remained cheaper if bought in bulk, at Costco, say, or at the supermarket. But prices for single-serving bottles increase dramatically when the retailer has a thirsty audience on the go, he said.
“You’re just sick of airports,” Mr. Bellas said.
At the Hudson store at the Birmingham airport, 20-ounce bottles of Dasani water and Smartwater (both owned by the Coca-Cola Company) cost $4.29 with tax, while all 20-ounce sodas (Coca -Cola, Diet Coke, Sprite) worth $4.09.
“Everybody needs to hydrate, and people think it makes their skin look good,” Kim Shoemaker, a Hudson employee, said of water. “No sugar, no chemicals, no additives.” said Ms. Shoemaker, 60, said she buys water pouches at Costco and keeps one-serving bottles in every room of her home, but she also owns several reusable flasks. “Oh, my, probably about six,” he said. “I don’t use them. I do not know why.”
Just outside the Hudson store is a water dispenser for reusable containers, its water is filtered and free and often unused.
Outside the baseball field, Ms. Frost, who traveled from Colorado for the tournament, said she has family members who don’t understand why someone would spend money on a reusable water container and water bottles that serve and not just refill the a cup from the tap.
“Ask my wife,” he offered. “He thinks it’s the stupidest thing in the world.”
To which her husband, Spencer Frost, emphatically added: “Just drink from the hose.”