Many people tend to focus on a few specific beneficial aspects of stainless steel bottles but also tend to ignore the full lifecycle of the product and how bad it actually is. All the benefits are also cited over single use virgin resin plastic drinks bottles as opposed to reusable ones or bottles produced with recycled resins.
The production and distribution of a stainless steel bottle requires seven times as much fossil fuel, releases 14 times more toxic and greenhouse gases, demands the extraction of hundreds of times more natural resources and causes hundreds of times more toxic risk to people and ecosystems than making an equivalent plastic bottle.
The margin of increased energy consumption is vast by comparison – all through the production and distribution process – that’s before you even get into all of its toxic and environmentally damaging components such as nickel, chromium and molybdenum. While the final products may be seen as ‘clean’, their creation is very dirty.
It’s an inconvenient truth to be sure but one that many consumers either choose to ignore or are unaware of. I’m sure all of the people in countries around the world who have to live and work around the mines creating the raw materials for this would not thank you for your environmentally ‘friendly’ choice.
