On any given day on Mississippi State’s spacious campus, there are large swarms of students lugging around water bottles, and it’s not just on our campus.
Arabella Ruiz, senior researcher for sustainable living website The Roundup, lays out the cold hard facts regarding reusable bottles.
“Data shows that 60% of US adults own a reusable water bottle in 2023. That’s around 155 million people, according to the latest U.S. census. However, that still leaves around 103 million U.S. adults that don’t yet own a reusable water bottle,” Ruiz said.
For the students who own water bottles, the style, color, brand and accessories that accompany the water bottle can be used to express individual preferences. For the purposes of concision, I will focus on the style of each water bottle and the hypothetical implications these stylistic choices could have.
Starting at the top of our imaginary tier, we have S’well bottles. S’well bottles are made of metal and claim to keep your beverage cold for up to forty-eight hours. Individuals who expect that level of reliability from their water bottles are likely also incredibly reliable themselves.
A review from Amazon, by a woman I will refer to as Samantha, states that “I can fill [the bottle] with ice and still have ice in it three days later.”
With an average price of approximately $40, these water bottles allude to the fact that they are owned by more environmentally conscious people who are unafraid to drop a relatively large sum of money on a relatively small water bottle.
The glossy, metallic look of the bottles does appeal to some, and even I can admit that the reusable aspect of the bottles is an amazing feature. However, I cannot get over the “big city chic” vibes that these metallic bottles radiate. While that may be some people’s idea of an ideal bottle, to me it looks more like perfectly smooth aluminum foil.
Overall, the price of the S’well bottles makes me die a little internally, and individuals who are willing to drop a large amount of money on a 25 ounce bottle terrify me, but the reliability of both the bottle and the individual carrying it cannot be overlooked.
Moving on to the Tervis Tumblers. The Tervis line of cups and tumblers gives me nostalgic whiplash back to when I lived in Florida, surrounded by beach towels in January and “Life’s a Beach” signs in every reasonable place. I distinctly remember sunny days with Tervis tumblers full of ginger ale wedged into the sand and the downing of root bear floats as we walked along the beach.
People who carry a Tervis of any kind, especially tumblers, radiate the same energy as the bottles they carry. I can picture the khakis and the Life is Good shirts, with a beachy tumbler in hand. The price of these bottles is about $25 each, so they are cheaper than the S’well bottles, and simultaneously offer a much wider range of styles.
Tervis tumblers, and the people who own them, are resilient and often bounce back from unexpected situations. I have personally dropped, burned and knocked these tumblers off of countertops and various other precarious places. Despite all of this, they usually remain intact and live to be reused another day.
The final water bottle that we will be examining is the Camelbak. This bottle is the definition of convenience, not to be mistaken for laziness. The straws that are built into the water bottles allow for the user to “drink in bed, while on a run, [and while] driving without spilling all over yourself,” according to Mallory Shaner, a writer for Colgate University analyzing the personality traits of Camelbak users.
Individuals with these bottles are great multitaskers as they can drink from the straw while simultaneously working on any task that has grabbed their attention. Owners of these bottles must also really enjoy cleaning, as I am sure that the straws in these bottles are horrid to clean and likely become filled with mold or other gross growths.
Water bottles are not the be-all-end-all of personality tests, and you clearly should not make judgments on the personalities of others based on their bottles. However, the subconscious decisions we make when choosing a water bottle allow us to make lighthearted assumptions about one another with some reasonable merit.