What Stanley Cups tell us about Gen Z’s water bottle obsession

There is almost always a water bottle in Austin Cucchiara’s hands – and there is permanently one on his left forearm. There, in plain black ink, sits a tattoo of his 32oz (900ml) Nalgene plastic canteen, a staple in his life for the last decade. ‘Where I go, my bottle goes with me,’ says Cucchiara, a 25-year-old data analyst from New Jersey. ‘Sometimes I’ll go out for 10 minutes and leave my water bottle at home. Seven minutes later I’m thirsty and I wish I’d brought it with me.’
Cucchiara got his first Nalgene as a teen, when he volunteered to build houses in the Dominican Republic every summer. ‘It was very important that we stayed hydrated because it was really hot,’ he explains, and when he returned to school he continued to use his big bottle daily. After years of carrying his Nalgene everywhere he went, ‘it felt like it was a part of me’. And so in 2022, Cucchiara literally made it a part of him – paying $300 to have the bottle inked on his skin.

Oversized water bottles are everywhere, part of a global market worth £9 billion. It is now possible – and somehow desirable – to carry 1.8 litres wherever you go. Formerly niche products for campers and hikers are now essential accessories, and the brands behind them are household names. 

TikTok videos about Stanley cups (a 111-year-old steel flask company) can rack up millions of views. Competitors Yeti, Frank Green and Hydro Flask also recur on the app. Even beauty brands such as Glossier now sell bulky bottles – and you can pop into Primark and get a plastic mammoth marked with the hours of the day warning there are ‘NO EXCUSES’ to stop drinking at 5pm.

Why are water bottles so big – figuratively and literally? Cucchiara’s Nalgene is too large to fit in his car’s cupholder; he has to tuck it between his body and the door. Yet a smaller 450ml bottle wouldn’t cut it, he says – he would have to refill it too often.

Things didn’t used to be this way. Comedian Russell Kane put it best in an October TikTok with two million views. ‘This is for everyone who’s old enough to remember anything before 1999,’ he began. Back then, he explained, ‘You didn’t have a bottle of water on you at all. You just went out of the front door and trusted you would get water wherever you were going.’

In the 1990s, 48-year-old Kane went on, he didn’t care about portable hydration. Whereas: ‘I’m out the house today without a bottle of water and I’m already panicking. I can see my skeleton rotting at the side of the M25.’ What, Kane asked, ‘the f—k has happened to us?’

The answer is not straightforward – it involves psychology, ecology, physiology, marketing and politics. These bottles do not really reveal how thirsty we are – at least, not for water. They expose our thirst for comfort, identity and meaning in the modern world.

In the early 2000s, Dutch medical professor Inez de Beaufort was listening to a guest speaker with advanced pancreatic cancer who had come to talk to her class. She was telling them about her symptoms, which included struggles with drinking and eating. ‘The students were drinking during her presentation,’ says de Beaufort, who worried that this was insensitive to the speaker. Afterwards, she continued to think about the incident. It awoke her to something she had previously noticed but not consciously thought about: her students always seemed to carry water.

This habit struck 69-year-old de Beaufort because: ‘I am from the Middle Ages, we were not allowed to drink during class.’ In 2007, she coined the term ‘camel syndrome’ to describe the phenomenon, writing in the Journal of Public Health that: ‘Like a camel one carries one’s water wherever one goes.’

At the time, de Beaufort’s students were starting to see water as the key to a healthy lifestyle. In 2000, the ‘Water Is Cool in School’ campaign was launched nationally by a UK bladder health charity – by 2006, Tony Blair was pledging to drink more water as part of a government health initiative called ‘Small Changes: Big Difference’. 

Yet de Beaufort believes students weren’t merely trying to be healthy, they were also trying to appear it. ‘It became a status symbol,’ she says. How exactly did H2O become ‘cool’? After Fiji Water was founded in 1996, celebrity endorsements became commonplace, and by 2006 the brand had appeared in Sex and the City and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. De Beaufort noticed that when her students sat down, they would ‘emphatically’ place their bottles in front of them. One even told her: ‘I’m not dressed without my bottle of water.’

The potent combination of health, beauty and celebrity made disposable bottled water popular in the early 2000s – but by the 2010s a new socially desirable trait had been stirred into the mix. Reusable water bottles became a symbol of eco-consciousness in an era when the climate crisis became a trending hashtag. In 2019, a product named Ocean Bottle launched on the crowdfunding website Indiegogo and raised more than £200,000, with a promise that each purchase would fund ‘the collection of 1,000 ocean-bound plastic bottles’.

It is clear as a highland spring that water began to communicate personality at the turn of the millennium, but that doesn’t explain why bottles have grown in size and popularity. De Beaufort can’t be sure. ‘I never carry water,’ she says, ‘which my children think is really stupid. I think it’s a lot of extra weight.’

Eric Hansen has worked at Nalgene for almost 20 years, but it’s the last decade that has been the most dramatic. When he first joined the 75-year-old New York plastics company, he says it created water bottles for ‘outdoor enthusiasts’ who needed big canteens for ‘camping, biking and hiking’. But in 2013, he attended a trade show and noticed new competitors flooding the market. Suddenly, Nalgene’s outdoor offerings began appearing more and more frequently indoors – in the office, the car, the gym.

Around the same time that Hansen attended the trade show, the ‘quantified self’ movement began to boom. The rise of self-tracking technology meant people could monitor steps stepped, sleep slept and heartbeats beaten. Some offerings remained manual: in 2018, a one-gallon, ‘motivational’ water bottle called BuildLife appeared on the market, which delineated how much water you should drink in a given hour, encouraging drinkers with phrases such as ‘You’ve got it’ and ‘Remember your goal’.
It is almost 80 years since scientists first began promoting a minimum daily water intake – in 1949, the United States’ National Academy of Sciences recommended drinking 1ml for every calorie of food (in short, 2-2.5 litres a day). Yet in recent years, the idea appears to have consumed us, with wellness influencers creating a hydration hype. In 2017, media personality Kourtney Kardashian claimed that she drank ‘almost’ her weight in water daily. 

Joe Derochowski, a home industry expert at consumer research company Circana, notes that the definition of wellness has continued to evolve. ‘The last year or two, it’s really been more about emotional wellness,’ he says. In 2023, UK market research firm Mintel found that 73 per cent of consumers believe ‘being optimally hydrated is important for mental performance’. Nalgene fan Cucchiara says that if he’s ever feeling upset, ‘I’m very conscious that maybe I just need to drink more water, and that will help me feel a little bit better.’

Many Nalgene bottles have markings that track how much water you’re drinking. Six sizes are now available, ranging from 12oz (350ml) to 48oz (1.4 litres). Hansen says the largest bottle attracts the goal-oriented consumer: ‘If you have a bigger container, it’s less work. You don’t have to refill it 10 times a day.’

But, for users, big bottles aren’t just practical – they’re fashionable. The romanticisation of hydration has led to fads: celebrities were first spotted with S’well, and then their hands were filled with Hydro Flasks. At present, Stanley is having its moment – in 2020, the company appointed Terence Reilly as its president. 

Reilly had previously used celebrity collaborations and influencer marketing to make Crocs shoes cool, and in the last few years he has repositioned the Stanley to appeal to women. Limited-edition colours now cause a frenzy, with American shoppers climbing over each other to get the latest cup.

Arguably, reusable bottles are now less environmentally friendly than ever, as collectors buy cups in every colour (one TikToker has 120 Stanleys in her home). ‘People are using the bottles as a life accessory. A lot of people will have five or six different colours because they’ll match it to their outfit that day,’ Hansen says.
Paurav Shukla, a professor of marketing at the University of Southampton, explains how identity can be bottled. ‘People – you, I, anyone – are consistently trying to find a way to demonstrate our identity,’ he says. In the 1980s, consumer expert Russell W Belk coined the term ‘extended self’ to explain how possessions can become personalities. 

Shukla argues that products that are conspicuous allow us to show off most efficiently – a few years ago, we might have invested in a flashy car or a luxury handbag, but a big bottle does the same job in a cost of living crisis. ‘People are searching for something cheaper – not necessarily cheap,’ Shukla says. You could, he notes, get a similar-looking cup to the Stanley for around £10 on Amazon, but a £50 branded cup is a ‘democratised luxury’.

On TikTok, the hashtag #EmotionalSupportWaterBottle has 18,000 posts – a phenomenon where people carry their bottles like a child clutching a security blanket, sometimes literally hiding behind them. The world is now full of tankard-shaped therapists.

‘I’ve always referred to myself as an anxious drinker,’ says Cucchiara. ‘When I’m speaking to people, I need to take sips of water between my sentences just to make sure I’m going slow.’ He used to teach, and found that holding his bottle meant he didn’t second guess what he was doing with his hands in front of his class.

In her ‘camel syndrome’ paper, de Beaufort noted that youngsters drank to keep busy – a new form of fidgeting, potentially replacing cigarettes. The professor timed students and found some would take a sip as often as every four minutes. She wondered whether ‘the continuous fondling of, toying with and sucking the bottle ought to be the subject of research by psychologists. Some Freudian-oriented psychologists might consider that the habit is a new expression of oral retention.’

Jess, a 25-year-old TikTok influencer, notes that her emotional support water bottle wouldn’t be the same without its straw. ‘It has to have the sippy straw, it has to,’ says Jess, who goes by @GetDressedWithJessX online. ‘I’ve got anxiety and just to ground myself, I sip it. It really relaxes me when I’m in social situations. It’s like a meditation, really.’

Jess says she first bought a big water bottle because she was influenced by other TikTokers; she adds that straws are more ‘aesthetic’ and ‘fashionable’, and fit with the so-called ‘It girl’ vibe. It girls, according to Jess, ‘put wellness first, put mental health first, and are really productive’. (While she says it’s nice that she’s helping the environment, she admits: ‘I don’t really know much about the environment.’)

Hazel Huang, a marketing professor at Durham University Business School, says that consumers form bonds with objects that can replace interpersonal relationships. ‘When consumers are lonely or socially excluded, they may turn to brands for comfort, especially those with anthropomorphic features,’ she says. While water bottles don’t have faces, Huang notes that today’s uniquely shaped bottles have other ‘strong features’ that signal a carrier’s identity and allow them to connect with like-minded others, providing self- and social identity.

Water bottles, then, could potentially be psychologically good for us – but what about physiologically? The idea we should drink eight glasses of water a day is a myth, says Tamara Hew-Butler, an associate professor of exercise physiology at Detroit’s Wayne State University.

‘The amount of water a person needs per day varies widely and is highly dependent on size, activity level and ambient temperature,’ says Hew-Butler, noting that the two-litres-a-day recommendation from 1949 actually included the water in soups, fruits, sauces and other foods, as well as tea and coffee. The academic stresses that drinking too much can lead to water intoxication or dysfunction of the bladder and kidneys. Other scientists have found that reusable plastic bottles can leak potentially harmful chemicals into our water.

Hew-Butler believes that time-marked bottles are not scientifically sound, and are ‘clever marketing, making us believe we need something we do not’. She stresses that our brain is the most important ‘app’ to monitor our water intake – when you’re thirsty, drink.

But what about Kane’s TikTok? Has drinking water all day everyday actually made us need it more than ever? ‘I don’t know of a valid physiological mechanism why people who drink a lot seem to get thirsty,’ Hew-Butler says, ‘other than they think their mouth feels dry because it is used to constantly being lubricated.’

What next? Are water bottles going to get bigger until we’re all carrying around buckets? Will someone invent wells-on-wheels?

Consumer expert Derochowski notes that big bottles arose at a specific moment in time. During the pandemic, he says, consumers were able to buy cups that didn’t fit in their car holders – after all, they were working from home. Then, post-pandemic germ-consciousness meant people wanted to refill their bottles in public less, so bigger bottles were required.

Does this mean the big bottle will die out? Derochowski still thinks they have ‘staying power’ – in November 2023, Circana found that sales of 40oz (1.1 litre) bottles in America were up 171 per cent compared to the year before. Here in the UK, Mintel has found that 79 per cent of Gen Z carry a reusable water bottle. Meanwhile, the cost of living crisis means 40 per cent of consumers reduced their spending on disposable bottles between 2022 and 2023.

Nalgene’s Hansen says the company doesn’t have plans to make a bigger bottle. ‘We feel our 48oz is about the maximum we want to go based on weight when full of water,’ he says. ‘At some point it becomes too big and bulky to tote around.’ Hansen believes that once various colour- and style-based fads die down, companies will focus on improving the sustainability of their products. In a competitive market, consumers may favour brands who use a higher percentage of recycled materials.

Cucchiara is perhaps the microcosm of the big bottle moment – his Nalgene has functional, social and personal value. He likes to track his water intake, so he tries to drink four full bottles a day. He enjoys using his Nalgene to express himself – he customises it with stickers for local breweries and ski resorts. And he is happy that he is doing his bit when it comes to climate change. Whatever happens next in the industry, Cucchiara isn’t changing. Unless he gets a laser beamed at his skin, a big water bottle will always be a part of his life.