· By Tanner Eddington
The Life of a Bottle
Not all bottles are created equal. Some hang around for centuries. Let’s follow what happens after that last sip, and why it matters more than most people realize.
Where It Starts
Plastic starts with oil.
Crude oil gets pulled from the ground, refined, and turned into PET, the clear plastic used in most bottled water. It’s cheap to make, but expensive for the planet.
Aluminum starts in the earth too, but that’s where the similarity ends.
Almost 75% of all aluminum ever produced is still in use today.1
Use and Reuse
Plastic bottles live fast and die young.
Only about 9% of all plastic waste ever gets recycled.2 The rest ends up burned, buried, or breaking down into fragments that find their way into oceans and food chains. The average plastic bottle lasts about 15 minutes before it’s tossed, then spends up to 1,000 years breaking down.3 Along the way, it sheds microplastics that don’t just disappear.
Aluminum bottles are built for better.
Aluminum stays in circulation, according to the International Aluminium Institute around 75% of all aluminum ever mined is still in circulation today.4 When you recycle it, it’s reborn as a new can. No landfill detour. Your empty RAIN bottle could come back as a bike, a car, or another.
The Bigger Picture
Choosing aluminum over plastic isn’t just about what you drink, it’s about what happens after. Every aluminum bottle recycled saves up to 95% of the energy it would take to make new metal.5 Multiply that by millions, and the difference adds up fast.
At RAIN, we bottle pure mountain spring water in aluminum that can be recycled forever, because sustainability is a part of everything we do.