Stanley Cups Overfloweth. (Not THAT Stanley Cup!)

As usual with consumer fads, I've missed the boat - or the cup - with the Stanley Tumbler, the resuable water bottle that is apparently the current "it" bottle, designed to replace the disposable plastic water bottles that are gunking up our fragile environment. 

Hundreds of billions of plastic bottles full of water are sold every year, and most of them aren't recycled once the water is drunk. Instead, they end up incinerated, or in landfills, or - worse - in the ocean, where they make up a goodly portion of sludgey waste islands like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In another few years, I've read that there'll be more discarded plastic water bottles than fish in the sea. 

So any effort to replace all those Poland Spring et al. bottles with something that's built to last is a good thing. And that's why I bought a Hydro-Flask stainless steel bottle to carry with me on warm/hot day walks, which I try to remember to do so I won't be tempted to bop into a convenience store and buy a bottle of Poland Springs when I'm thirsty and a couple of miles away from home. 

A good thing, no? One less bottle in the Atlantic Garbage Patch. One less dead polar bear. One less swordfish with a body riddled with nano-plastic particles that will never decay.

Well, not so fast, especially when the virtuous reusable bottle is part of a whirling, swirling fad. As is the case with the Stanley. 

...the craze has sparked some less-than-sustainable behavior. People boast about owning dozens of them. When Target released special editions, including a much-coveted Starbucks version, it caused a mini stampede. (Source: Boston Globe)

2023 was the year of the Stanley. Thanks to clever marketers (sadly, I missed out on the marketing), spurious influencers (sadly, I missed out on the influencing), and super-exposure on TikTok and other social media platforms (sadly, I missed out on the TikTok-ing), Stanley sold an awful lot of tumblers last year. Revenues reached $750M - this in a company with revenues that were under $100M back in 2020. 

Whilereusables might seem like a good, eco-conscious investment - use it for three years and you've replaced 1,000 daily plastic water bottles. Sure, that sounds like a drop in the bucket. But when you multiple it by the 10 million Quencher water bottles that Stanley sold last year...

Alas, the popularity of the Stanley cups has a downside. People fall in love with a product, and they want more and more of it. (Ask me about Allbirds sneakers, why don't you.) And that overconsumption can negate the eco blessings if folks start collecting all the color and other versions of them. Remember, it takes materials and energy to manufacture these suckers. Steel plants burn coal...

Stanley is trying to putting more sustainable manufacturing processes in place. While the popular Quencher tumblers are "made with 90% recycled steel," the use of recycled steel is far less for its other products. "It aims to raise that to at least 50% by 2025."

Production costs aside, there's the time it takes for the purchase of a sustainable product to be worthwhile, environment-wise. 

Researchers have coined a term to measure the amount of time a person must reuse an alternative before it fully offsets the single-use product it replaces: the environmental payback period. A 2020 paper found that for straws, coffee cups and forks, metal alternatives had to be used the longest — anywhere from a few months to a few years — in order to break even.

No mention of bottles, but it probably takes a while for payback to start paying back. (What's the expression about payback being a bitch?)

Then there are other good-for-the-environment products that tend to proliferate. Sure, I no longer take bags at the grocery store or CVS. I use one of my backpacks - I swear, I only have two and one's heavy duty while the other one's for smaller loads - or one my many nylon tote bags (which do tend to fray over time...)  

As for Stanley:

Some trend forecasters say the fad is already over. “Some millennials or Gen-Z are already embarrassed to carry a Stanley,” said Casey Lewis, who writes the trendspotting newsletter, After School. “And we know what’s going to happen,” she said. They’ll sit unused, gather dust on a shelf or in a basement, or “worst case scenario, they’ll end up in landfills.”

There's a new "it" water bottle on the horizon for the influencers to start guzzling from. Owala bottles are said to be taking off on college campuses. 

The good news, of course, is that people are growing more conscious about the use (and disposal) of those odious plastic water bottles. This is good news for the environment, even if we do end up with a bit of overconsumption of the new and shiny objects that replace them.