Far from silly trends, hydration obsession and mania for water bottles—particularly ones that are reusable, aesthetically considered, large, and often expensive—have fascinating historical roots and reveal a great deal about today’s wellness and consumer culture.
Bottled water has been sold in the U.S. since nationhood, as Francis H. Chapelle has recounted. By 1920, most municipalities provided free, chlorinated water straight from the tap, which consumers at the time considered a modern marvel. As a result, by 1930 basic bottled water was viewed as “low class,” indicative of substandard sanitation infrastructure.
American bottled water perceptions shifted again in the early 1980s, as the “yuppie” generation embraced conspicuous consumption and health pursuits. They purchased chic bottled waters, like Evian and Perrier, which expanded in the American market in the late 1970s. Bottled water consumption also increased after 1989, when inexpensive, lightweight PET plastic became available, and in the 1990s, when soda giants Pepsi and Coca-Cola launched bottled water brands Aquafina and Dasani.
As bottled water purchases climbed in the 2000s, numerous critics decried the environmental waste of single-use plastics. Nevertheless, millions of Americans still avoid tap water, distrusting it even before the Flint water crisis in 2014. In fact, by 2016, Americans drank more bottled water than any other bottled beverage.
For those who trust or filter their tap water, reusable water bottles posed an environmentally conscious consumer habit that took off in the mid-2000s, especially among college students.
The roots of this trend largely lie in the countercultural 1960s and 1970s, when bottles like those made by Nalgene became available and popular among a niche market of hikers, campers, and “crunchy” eco-conscious consumers, early adopters of consumerist environmentalism, such as the rise of “reduce, reuse, recycle" in 1970. Nalgene bottles grew popular again in the new millennium, especially after 2002, when they came in new colors beyond the original gray.
Noticing the early days of water bottle mania, health care ethics professor Inez de Beaufort coined the term “the camel syndrome” in 2007 in the Journal of Public Health to describe how young Dutch people, aged 12 to 30, routinely carried water bottles with them. She noted adjacent shifts in consumer culture as backpacks and tote bags began to feature compartments specifically for bottles.
Around the same time in the U.S., water bottles evolved into must-have items that communicated not just eco-consciousness and health, but also style, taste, and personality. Indeed, forecasting firm WGSN dates water bottles as a lifestyle trend to 2011. Like the world of fashion, specific brands drove cyclic consumer desire: Nalgene, Bobble, and S’well, followed by Yeti, Hydro Flask, and Stanley, to name but a few.