The $30 Water Bottle
The water, however, tastes the same
Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app.
[Please excuse me Peak Fitness readers, but I’m going on a little rant today. Back to useful stuff with my next post.]
Not sure if you caught the hype, but the new KOR ONE hydration vessel (a.k.a., a plastic water bottle) went on sale for, gulp, $30. One look at it and I can see why several design and gadget websites are so enamoured with it. It’s a beautiful product. It’s BPA-free, bombproof, holds 750 mL of fluids, and is dishwasher-safe. It also cost about as much as my local water department charges me each month to run my dishwasher 30 times, wash 14 loads of laundry, provide water for 30 baths and 60 showers, plus slack the daily thirst of a family of four.
Look, I appreciate good design just as much as any gear junkie with a little-used degree in fashion design, but in terms of saving the world, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around spending $30 for a water bottle*. And from the looks of their website, KOR knows this as well. They’re being very open about what goes into their water bottle, how the price reflects the true cost of sustainable materials, how they’re giving 1% back to the planet—all that good stuff that goes into justifying a premium price for a high-quality product.
But at the end of the day, the water I drink out of the plastic 7-Eleven Big Gulp cup that came free with the Diet Coke I bought two months ago is going to taste the same as the water come out of the KOR bottle, no? And I get the added benefit of having used the cost savings to keep my plates, clothes, and family clean for a month.
Okay, so I’m not KOR’s target market. Their market is the people who drop $2 on a daily bottle of water shipped from a spring in Fiji or France. The design of the KOR bottle says, “Yeah, I could drop $50 a month on bottled drinking water, but I’m saving the planet by re-using my high-profile, $30 KOR ONE.”
As much as this particular idea gets under my skin, I can’t knock KOR for figuring out one wierd way to save the planet and make some green off tap water. Here’s drinking to your health, people.
* Although, I must admit that I have no problem justifying the $50k price tag on a nice German sports sedan when a used, $10k Honda Civic is really all I need. Just saying I’m not perfect, and we all have our differences, okay?