Are Glass Water Bottles Better Than Plastic?

From ocean pollution to health concerns, the negative impacts of plastic water bottles are clear. But, a lot of people still bizarrely opt for plastic over glass. Sure, it may seem more convenient to grab a disposable plastic water bottle and go, and maybe that new plastic water bottle design made by a beauty brand you absolutely love is tempting because it’s cute. But are the risks worth it? With reusable water bottles, drinking water on the go is just as easy and refilling takes a negligible amount of time. And, I can’t believe we even have to alert people to this anymore, but reusable water bottles are also beyond better for the environment and our bodies. If you're still on the fence about ditching plastic in favor of a super cute and clean bkr water bottle, read up on the facts and allow us to convince you otherwise. (Did we mention you can even attach your lip balm to your bkr water bottle? Your plastic water bottle can't even imagine doing that.)

Environmental Impacts

There is no competition. Glass is better for our environment than plastic, period. A minimum of eight million tons of plastic goes into the ocean every. single. year. Minimum. Let that sink in. We can't even imagine eight million tons of anything. Unless we're talking about fish, there shouldn’t be much of anything hanging out in the ocean. And if plastic doesn't end up there, it ends up in landfills, where a single plastic bottle will sit for 1,000 years. Even worse, once the plastic does start to break down, it will leach harmful chemicals into the area's soil and water reserves.

Plastic pollution is so prevalent because most people don't recycle. They toss plastic in the trash, and it goes to live in a landfill for the rest of eternity. Even when plastic water bottles are recycled, much of the plastic isn't usable during the recycling process. If the plastic isn't the right kind needed to make a new item or if it's been recycled too many times, it will be unrecyclable. Single-use plastics also use a lot of fossil fuels during production, releasing high levels of CO2 into the atmosphere and worsening the climate change crisis. And the chemicals released from the plants where plastics are made are highly toxic and significantly increase the likelihood that residents nearby will develop cancer and respiratory problems. Which disproportionately impacts communities of color, because in most instances those are the communities living near petrochemical plants.  

Glass, on the other hand, is easier to recycle and glass doesn’t downcycle or go to waste - it recycles to make more glass. Even better, when you're using a reusable water bottle, you don't need to worry about waste because you can eternally drink from the same bottle. When your glass water bottle eventually becomes old or damaged, you can rest assured that it will be recycled into something new. And glass that isn’t recycled becomes rocks and sand and leaches nothing into the environment. 

Health and Wellness

If environmental health isn't enough to convince you to make the switch, maybe your health is. Glass water bottles are made from natural, sustainable sources, unlike plastic, which is made of chemicals, most of which are harmful. In a nutshell. Glass can be recycled indefinitely without reducing the quality because it's made from natural sources like sand. According to the EPA, making a new product out of recycled glass is even easier than making a new bottle. Not true for plastic.

Plastic water bottles are made from many different chemicals that may leach into your water, meaning you're ingesting them. It's even worse if you're refilling plastic water bottles. You may feel like you're doing something good for the environment by hanging on to that single-use bottle for weeks, but they're called single-use for a reason. Not only can disposable plastic break down and leach chemicals into your water with each refill, they are also cheap and porous. Which means they tend to harbor bacteria and could make you sick with reuse. You may have also heard that many plastic water bottles contain BPA or some potentially worse BPA-replacement plastic hardeners in them (glass water bottles do not). These endocrine-disrupting chemicals can cause significant issues with your body's hormones. By imitating and intruding on your body's natural hormone production, BPA can lead to reproductive disorders, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and fetal development issues. Can I just say: not. worth. it.

Lifestyle

Since there are so many reasons why glass water bottles will improve your lifestyle compared to single-use plastics, we're going to keep it simple with a few bullets points:

• Glass doesn't hold flavor, but plastic does. And as the plastic chemicals start to leach out of your bottle, they'll give your water a weird taste. Gross.
• Worried about breaking a glass bottle? We already have a solution. The bkr water bottle sleeves aren’t just pretty (and interchangeable!), they also protect the glass underneath. We tell people to treat their bkr like their cell phone and use it with care, but most people use the word “shocked” to describe their surprise at how well their bottle holds up with random falls over time.
• Glass is dishwasher safe, making it easy to keep your water bottle sterilized. Even our sleeves and caps are dishwasher safe and you don’t really have to take the sleeve off each time to wash your bkr bottle.
• Glass is ultimately as convenient and cheaper over time than single-use plastic. You don’t have to keep buying flats of water every time you go to the store, which could end up saving you upwards of a thousand dollars a year depending on how much you buy. Instead of the endless schelp and expense of buying water, just go to your bkr cabinet, pick one, and fill it up x infinity.
• Lastly, the bkr water bottle aesthetic is, in our humble opinion, unmatched. Plastic water bottles are just not cute. bkrs are available in so many different colors, sizes, shapes, and designs so you can find a bottle you truly love. If you like it, you're way more likely to use it all day long. Kind of like your favorite t-shirt: it never gets old.

Glass wins every time. But we still get this question:

"What about reusing single-use glass water bottles. Isn't that enough?"

It's better but not great, TBH. These bottles are still not made for long-term use, and they are more likely to break. They still have a major impact on the environment because companies continue to produce them in large quantities for single-use. Plus, walking around with a branded water bottle makes you a billboard for a wasteful industry and sends a message by association. No thanks, I’ll stick to a reusable bkr water bottle and the message that it sends: that it’s important to care about the world and your health. And that I have very good taste.

Okay, so why bkr?

You kind of have to own one to understand. bkr is a magical accumulation of little details that together feel like luxury. It’s like the perfect t-shirt of glass water bottles. It’s soft and pretty, it feels right and fits right, you want it in every color, it’s effortless, you can’t help but love it, and it legitimately becomes an extension of you.