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The concept of bottled water has gained popularity over the years as a convenient way to hydrate on-the-go, and as a way to hydrate in areas where tap water is not of a safe drinking quality. Nowadays, the bottled water market is a multi-billion dollar industry and shows no sign of slowing.
Bottled water has typically been bottled with single-use PET plastic bottles, and the use of these plastic bottles has long been a source of concern due to its negative impact on the environment. Over 7.7 billion plastic water bottles are consumed every year in the UK, and with PET plastic not being a biodegradable material, it means bottled water can take hundreds of years to break down in the environment! As a result, bottled water is one of the main contributors to the plastic waste problem that is polluting our cities, rivers and oceans. In 2050, there is estimated to be more plastic in the ocean, by weight, than fish!
In the past few years, many companies have been looking for more sustainable alternatives for packaging bottled water - recently with the use of aluminium bottles.
In this article, we will outline why aluminium bottled water is proposed as a sustainable alternative to using plastic (PET) for bottled water, and outline the benefits of using aluminium bottles over plastic bottles.
There are a number of benefits of using aluminium bottles versus plastic bottles for bottled water, we will cover the main differences below that argue the case of using aluminium bottles being a sustainable alternative to PET bottled water.
Aluminium is an infinitely recyclable material - which means that it can be recycled indefinitely without any sort of degradation - forming a closed-loop system. For example, recycling an aluminium bottle of water can be turned into a new bottle in as little as 60 days! In comparison, plastic degrades after each recycle that means they must be disposed of after a certain number of cycles - resulting in greater waste to the environment.
Despite putting your plastic bottle in the recycling, only 44% of plastic packaging waste actually gets recycled - with the remaining 56% not being recycled and ending up in landfill or polluting our cities, rivers and oceans.
Aluminium, however, is a highly recyclable mterial - with over 75% of all aluminium ever produced is still in use today. As a material, aluminium has a higher intrinsic value and thus features a far higher recyclability rate than plastic packaging. The aluminium recyclability rate for the UK in 2021 was 68% - with a staggering 82% of aluminium beverage cans being recycled! The result of this is that less bottles end up in landfill, and are actually recycled into new aluminium products.
Aluminium is a sturdy and lightweight material, often found in the production of airplanes thanks to its properties! For bottled water, this means aluminium bottles are far more durable and reusable, steering away from a plastic bottle that is single-use to using a aluminium bottle that is reusable and built to be reused and refilled time and time again. Using a aluminium bottle promotes consumers to refill and reuse their product, which helps prevent the purchase of further single-use bottles and its subsequent waste.
If 1 in 10 Brits chose to refill their bottle just once a week, we’d save about 340 million plastic bottles a year!
There has been growing concern in consuming bottled water in PET bottles due to some plastic water bottles may leach chemicals in the water. If ingested, these chemicals can be harmful for human health - with focus on paticulalry the chemical bisphenol A (BPA). BPA has been linked to numerous reproductive and developmental abnormalities, as well as other health problems. All aluminium bottles designed for drinking, such as our own altwater bottle, have a BPA-free layer that mean there are no micro-plastics or BPA present in the drinking water - a large health concern for many.
At altwater, we are offering a reusable alternative to single-use bottled water with our aluminium bottle pre-filled with British spring water. Our bottle is designed to be refilled and reused time and time again, with many of our customers using their bottle for months! We provide all of the convenience of bottled water on the go (for example if you’ve left your reusable flask at home), but without the wastefulness of single-use plastic!
If you are interested in learning more about altwater and how we are trying to eliminate single-use plastic waste in bottled water, visit our homepage for more details or find where to buy altwater in-store by visiting our retailer list here.
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