I heard that the large market of single use water bottles is mainly an American thing, and I can understand not needing them since you can simply use reusable water bottles. However there seems to be one use of single use water bottles that is hard to work around, when you need to distribute a lot of water to a lot of people. For example, I was in marching band and every football game they gave one water bottle to everyone. Or one time we were on a field trip and they gave everyone prepackaged lunches and everyone got a water bottle. How are these kinds of things handled in Europe? Thanks.
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You just fill up a large [dunk of water](https://productimages.biltema.com/v1/image/imagebyfilename/88-419_xl_1.jpg) and depending on the occasion there might be cups involved or they might just refill your own water bottle.
Here from Germany, a brief summary of a report I saw recently.
Since a deposit system has also been
Since a deposit system also applies to disposable PET bottles, the ratio of disposable PET bottles to reusable PET and glass bottles has turned in favour of reusable bottles.
Today, more water and soft drinks are sold in one-way PET bottles in Germany than before the mandatory deposit. I cannot see a logical reason for this. Both types, disposable and reusable, are taken back at the same vending machines. The only difference is that the supermarket has more work with returnable bottles. When you throw in the disposable PET, all you hear is a “plop” and then the shredder……
At events, it’s usually handled just like you described, unfortunately.
Otherwise, our tap water is really good (Vienna’s tap water comes straight from the Alps), so there’s not much use for buying drinking water at all.
Plastic water bottles you buy in the super market are NOT for reuse or refill.
[https://www.plasticsoupfoundation.org/en/2018/04/microplastics-in-bottled-water/](https://www.plasticsoupfoundation.org/en/2018/04/microplastics-in-bottled-water/)
Best are glass or stainless steel bottles. Followed by plastic bottles made with the explicit intend to be reused such as a dopper. I feel OK promoting dopper because it’s a B-corp. But even that, when you have a dopper, is suggested to only use for up to a year.
I work in an office, essentially everyone brings from glasses/cups and/or has his/her own water bottle that they take with them. I guess people buy and drink soft drinks from bottles, but water, no not really ever. Unless you’re out and about on a city trip or something and want water but there’s no refill nearby, fortunately, atleast in the netherlands you see more and more public water faucets on the street.
It’s not like water bottles are rare here. People buy them on the go or when at an event, probably just like in America. It’s just that we don’t buy them for home from a grocery store. At home we just drink unfiltered tap.
We have them. Considering this is supposed to be the saudi arabia of potable water, I’ve never understood why, so I never buy them. That being said, all of our bottles are and have been recycled for about half a century so they’re not explicit trash as it tends to be everywhere else.
Obviously they are a thing and people use them too, but we A) have a recycling system so most water bottles get reused in some way or another (unless you buy the really cheap single use ones) and
b) we have amazing tap water that’s mostly even cleaner than the bottled stuff, so any sensible human doesn’t buy water in bottles but just uses their tap, unless they are on a trip or something.
In Finland they are sold in shops, kiosks etc. and the bottles can be recycled and you get money from the recycling machines in stores. Some people live from collecting cans and bottles from the streets and take them to the recycling machines.
Our tap water is really clean and most people drink that and sometimes fill empty waterbottles with tap water but buying water from stores is quite uncommon. People mostly buy vichy or soda etc. instead of bottled water, because clean water is available from taps.
Single user water bottles don’t exist as a concept here. I’ve been returning plastic bottles for 50öre (now 1kr) for as long as I’ve been alive. I believe they started putting out those bottle return machines in convenience stores in the early 80s. So as soon as I was old enough I’ve been returning bottles for recycling.
The only single use water bottle I see is when someone brings a bottle from Denmark, because we unfortunately still have two different return systems.
They’re still quite common, particularly when people are out and don’t want something loaded with sugar. My MiL insists on buying it even though our tap water is straight from Loch Turret, but she’s got Notions and won’t drink tap water.
I do tend to buy tap water if I’m visiting parts of England though.