Remember six or so years ago, when S’well water bottles were all the rage? I adored my metallic blue bottle that I flaunted around my high school. By the time the pandemic hit, Hydro Flasks had taken over. My TikTok feed was flooded with videos of VSCO girls sporting oversized t-shirts, colorful scrunchies, and Birkenstocks; their attire was never complete without a sticker-covered Hydro Flask. The Yeti succeeded the Hydro Flask, and now we find ourselves firmly in the Stanley and Owala era.
It’s exhausting trying to keep up.
What was once a simple, practical purchase—an insulated, reusable bottle designed to reduce plastic waste—has fallen victim to the capitalist machine.
Beyond the yearly water bottle trends, I’ve seen countless videos on my Instagram Reels of influencers packing, accessorizing, and restocking their water bottles. In one such video, an influencer attached a miniature backpack to her Stanley, complete with a Rhode lip tint, wet wipes, hand sanitizer, tenoverten hand cream, a travel-sized toothbrush, deodorant eco-wipes, make-up remover wipes, AirPods, lip balm, L’Occitane hand cream, and perfume. She captioned the video with the instruction, “Comment ‘New Year,’ and I’ll send you everything.” In another Reel, an influencer prepared his water of the day by pouring the contents of two plastic water bottles into one reusable Stanley.
The global reusable water bottle market generated over $9 million in 2024, with online sales being its most lucrative market. I largely credit the rise of TikTok Shop and other social media marketplaces for this incredible statistic. The accessibility and ease that social media marketplaces promote encourage users to scroll, pause, and purchase, all in a few clicks. According to a 2021 study by TikTok, 70% of their users discover new products on the platform, and three in four users are likely to purchase something while on the application.
TikTok Shop has also created opportunities for influencers to profit from these water bottle trends. Its Affiliate Program allows brands and content creators to connect through a commission-based relationship. As a result, a quarter of United States consumers reported buying a gift directly based on an influencer’s recommendation. Influencers, like those promoting a miniature backpack for their Stanleys, are literally paid to overwhelm their followers with unnecessary products.
This phenomenon reflects the Jevons paradox, where technological advancements make a resource more efficient, thereby decreasing its cost and increasing overall demand and total consumption. While, in theory, reusable water bottles should help curb plastic waste, sensationalizing them as part of a content creator’s lifestyle has only produced another wave of excessive consumption.
Instead of reducing waste, the constant push for new designs, colors, and accessories encourages further material production. According to a 2009 New York Times article, producing one 300-gram stainless steel water bottle “demands the extraction of hundreds of times more metal resources and causes hundreds of times more toxic risk to people and ecosystems than making a 32-gram plastic bottle.”
If reusable bottles are used for their intended purpose—and prevent consumers from buying and throwing away countless plastic bottles—these environmental costs would be somewhat offset. However, purchasing a new water bottle every time a limited edition color drops, or accessorizing the bottle with more plastic waste you don’t need, only feeds into a vicious cycle of overconsumption and waste.
At some point, the Stanley and Owala era will fade, replaced by some other trendy bottle or tumbler promising to be the new accessory to the influencer lifestyle. With this new bottle will come more lip tints, wet wipes, hand sanitizer, hand cream, and everything else in between. The cycle will inevitably repeat, and we’ll once again find ourselves scrolling, pausing, and purchasing.
I implore you to stop. The trendiest water bottle out there isn’t a Hydro Flask or Yeti or Owala; it’s the one you already have.
Lyah Muktavaram is a member of the class of 2026 and can be reached at lmuktavaram@wesleyan.edu.