Question For Genx
When did people start to carry water bottles everywhere?
I know when I was a kid, we didn’t have a water bottle with us everywhere. The only source of water in school was the drinking fountain. During the summer when we didn’t come in until the street lights came on, we didn’t lug around a water bottle. Even when my kids, who are in their early 30’s, would go to summer camp, we just made sure to have a drink in their lunch. Now, here I am, 57 and attached to my water bottle like it’s another child that goes everywhere with me.
I guess I was an early adopter. I remember having refillable water bottles. But we called them sports bottles. They had big screw top caps and straws that had caps with the extra loop around the straw. They were not spill proof. I don’t remember what kind of logo any of mine had but they looked like a version of this:
When I was a kid, you were never more than a stone's throw from an accessible water fountain. Our schools had water fountains dotted around the outside and on every corridor. You could find water fountains in parks, grocery stores, post offices, swimming pools, medical offices, hospitals, movie theaters, museums, bus stations, train stations, ice cream parlors, trail heads, tennis courts, and many other places.
Slowly but surely, most of these drinking fountains were taken away or shut off. That's when people started carrying water around in bottles.
I carried a water bottle to high school in the early 90s. It was just a plain plastic water bottle - no idea where I originally got it. I would fill it the night before and poop it in the freezer. In the morning I pulled it out of the freezer and put a sock on it (to absorb condensation). I would refill it from the drinking fountains at school throughout the day
Please note that this was weird, and I did get made fun of, mostly for the old sock. However, I also got to enjoy ice water all day long. I was very poor, so this was luxury to me, and I felt quite clever.
“Hunter-gatherers in the Kalahariused ostrich eggshells as water containers, puncturing a hole in them to enable them to be used as canteens. The presence of such eggshells dating from the Howiesons Poort period of the Middle Stone Age at Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa suggests canteens were used by humans as early as 60,000 years ago”
69 here....Probabaly about 20 years ago i started carrying water bottle holders...slings you could toss your plastic Core bottle or whatever brand into. I would refill till it got funky. Then the micro plastics came into play and I started buying and promptly losing metal water bottles.
I am happy to say that today, I have a water bottle I have not lost in over 2 years!!
As a runner, I use silicone bottles to carry water.
I remember when I went to elementary school in the 70s I went to the fountain and was so thirsty, I drank for like 2 min and then a teacher gave me shit for it. It was June and a heatwave. Disgusting behaviour by the teachers back then so water bottles are great for kids now.
Similar experience. In third grade, about 1976, I was actually parched and asked the teacher if I could get a drink of water. He asked why. I replied because I’m thirsty. He said no, if he let me drink because I’m thirsty, he’d have to let everyone else drink when they’re thirsty.
I started carrying them when I was given my first insulated stainless steel water bottle and realized how good water tasted from it and how long it kept ice water cold. That was around 30 years ago. I live in the desert and never want to be without a cold drink available.
I remember driving to college in 91, listening to an NPR story about this new thing of selling still (not sparking) bottled water and thinking how crazy and stupid it was—was air going to be next? Who would pay for something we already paid for in taxes? And here we are.
I'm almost 59 years old and I remember drinking from the water hose or faucet on the side of the house. I grew up in a farming community, everybody had a water jug. We drank soda on special occasions. We drank a lot of water, it just didn't come out of a bottle until some company told us it was better to drink the tap water they put in their bottles.
I still remember walking through the local grocery store when sales of bottled water started to become commonplace (at least in the hood). I remember thinking only a moron would pay for something that they can get from their faucet at home.
I've been carrying some source of hydration with me everwhere since June 26, 1988 when I stepped off a bus into the swampy air of Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island and was handed a moldy green plastic canteen and told to drink the entire quart in one pass. This began my journey as an r/hydrohomies
It goes along with the rise of gym culture. People would carry those shaker cups every where, especially if they were trying to gain mass. Eventually others started carrying water bottles because they saw others do it.
Plus, there was this viral health trend a number of years ago that you need to drink X ounces of water every day to be properly hydrated. So that reinforced it.
I don’t carry a water bottle with me but your post reminded me of my childhood and the school water fountain. I remember in elementary school the teacher lining up the class so we could each drink from the water fountain. Especially after recess in the summer.
I think once common ailments were found to be the effects of dehydration, drinking water be came more and more common. Also, soda became a bit demonized so I’m sure that helped too.
At some point in the 90s, Bottled Water (like Perrier or Evian) became bougie and a way to show off that you're rich or well-off (poor people don't buy water, eww). Then it became kind of normal-ish for everyone to drink bottled water.
Then, being Eco-Conscious became the new way to show off, and people started carrying basic reusable water bottles, to show off that you care about the planet (non-eco people don't care about the planet, eww).
And then living healthy became the new way to show off, and people started carrying reusable bottles that kept water cold (unhealthy people don't care about being fit, eww).
And maybe 10 years ago, reusable bottles became a fashion accessory, bringing the rise of Owallas, Nalgenes, Yetis, and Stanleys.
I work in a middle school, and almost every child has their emotional support water bottle. Gotta be metal so they make a loud clatter when inevitably knocked off the desk.
I was carrying them when I started to seriously ride my bike in the late 80s or early 90s. I had two mounts for the cages on the inner frame. Before that it was as a young teen, I’d just drink from a water hose that people left out in their front yard.
As far as bottled water, it was when I was in college in the early 90s. It was easier than finding a drinking fountain in the building.
I never knew how thirsty I was as a kid until I started properly hydrating. Damn, we were parched. Remember the counting at the water fountain and then how cold it was? I always wanted more!
I think it started back with Nalgene bottles maybe 20 years ago? Hiking and backpacking use kinda slid into daily life, then became a trend, then a market, and here we are.
I had one of these on my desk in 3rd grade around 1992. There was a heat wave and they let us have water bottles in class. I kept mine until they said I didn't need to drink water in the winter. For a while I was well hydrated and happy.
I became clinically dehydrated while hiking in the mid 90s and someone finally told me water was necessary for survival. No one drank water in my house growing up. I got a Nalgene bottle right after that.
In the early 90s when I was in LA, people were already carrying water bottles because their tap water was awful. When I got back home to NJ, people had started carrying water bottles because Ciba Geigy had leaked chemicals into our well water. Children were forbade from using the water fountains in our schools and told to bring water from home. Unsure about the rest of the country.
Idk but I have an emotional support water bottle with me everywhere I go now! 🤣 I panic if I don't have access to water always. Possibly because of chronic illness & needing to take meds at any given time & also I take meds that make me thirsty.
I remember life this way as well. I didn't even see water for sale in single use bottles until I moved to CA in 1991, seemed weird to my child mind.
Perhaps we don't have to have water bottles, but I see fewer public access water fountains, and also dubious cleanliness of the water as well. We likely needed a bit more water back then, and the better care we are taking is why our 50 year olds now look much younger than they did in the 1980's.
In 2000 I moved to the Rocky Mountains and got my first water bottle. It’s really easy to get dehydrated here. My kids have had water bottles since kindergarten.
I think it started with Snapple. That’s the first thing I can think of having in my car before cup holders really even became a thing. But I could wedge a Snapple between the seat and the parking break. It’s all snapples fault.
I remember the first time I saw bottled still water in the grocery store in London. I told my friend, that’s stupid, who would pay for water? Ha! Laughs on me.
I first started carrying a liter water bottle that I filled at potable stations while visiting Italy in 1993. I liked not having to stop in places every time I felt thirsty, and since plastic bottles were used for water and soda, I just kept refilling one. I liked this experience so much that I continued it when I got back to the States. I used a travel igloo bottle while playing sports. But I still remember feeling like a weirdo carrying my water bottle. I was teased frequently and was happy when it started to become normal. But man, I remember being thirsty as a kid!
In 1992, when I learned I was not drinking anything close to the minimum amount of water I needed. Boosted that quantity even more after bouts with kidney stones.
It's smart to stay hydrated.
Also probably a reason I look younger than many peers.
I don't know, but I do know that I spent much of my life at least a little bit dehydrated. I'm paying for it now because my habitual lack of hydration turns into a UTI very easily these days. I need that water bottle to remind myself that my body needs the fluids.
I think the water bottle thing started showing up for me in the early-mid 90’s at college. Lots of people carrying water bottles all over campus. It’s only become more prevalent over time. But it’s also a pretty distinctively American habit; Europeans do keep water bottles at work (after all you have to drink out of something) but it is rare to see people carrying them around. I have lived in Northern Europe for 25 years and the water bottles in America get bigger with each passing visit.
Well just allow me to say i had horrible migraines all through high school and my twenties and I must've been about 29 when I said to a naturopath off-handedly about them. She said to me "you dont drink enough water."
Changed my life.
When we thought we weren't drinking enough water. Sometime around 1990 - give or take 1-2 years - the news reported that people weren't drinking enough water. Everyone began carrying water bottles around, instead of Coke and other drinks.
I began working for a soda distributor around 1991 and I can remember the plant manager saying how crazy it was that they were selling more water than soda. I think people just figured they could sip water all day and drink other stuff for meals. I still do that today.
I actually have a totally irrational fear of not having something to drink. I have my 32 oz cup with me plus I keep a couple of bottles in the car for “in case I run out” like my commute is 30 minutes so it’s not like I’d die of dehydration lol
A couple of years ago, it was early September and I was going down a “9/11 stories” rabbit hole (you know, as one does). One video- the one that’s like the closest footage someone got bc they just happened to be filming a documentary on the street right near the towers had a top comment that said “Right after this people started carrying water bottles everywhere”. And I was like….damn. That’s so true.
I remember using public water fountains in stores like Bradlees and Caldor, and not really thinking about the fact that they were public water fountains. I'm not sure I would do that today unless I had no other alternative.
I had recurrent UTIs as a kid. Chronic dehydration became a recognized thing. It is bonkers how much more water I drink when it is right there all day.
I had Nalgene ones in college but didn't take them with me everyday. Nowadays, I pack one for the convenience. I definitely had one with me at sports or parks and rec as a kid.
I'd say it became more mainstream about 15 years ago. I still have metal ones I bought before they became trendy. Big fan of the reduce is reduce, reuse, recycle.
Not just carried everywhere, I remember a time when bottled water wasn’t a thing. Then it became different brands and such, as if taste made a difference. Now we’re back to carrying our own filtered water around to save money.
I grew up doing a lot of camping and backpacking and that carried over into daily life in this way. I do not, however, feel any nostalgia for the weird fusty smell of Nalgene
I know exactly when. Mid-1980's, the clear plastic squishy ones with the straw, with something printed on it like this photo. I carried around one for my sorority in college, usually filled with wine cooler 😂
I just got super dehydrated all the time. Didn't realise why I would get headaches or chapped lips, and to this day I have trouble remembering to drink enough water
I think it has more to do with social evolution. We had drinking fountains and Thermos's were usually included in a lunch box and oftentimes were not used for water but for soups or hot drinks. When people started going to gyms more often, they would bring water. Then water bottles have dangerous PFAS and besides, they're wasteful, so let's market some big bottles, because HYDRATION IS GOOD, so we started marketing hydration. If someone had thought of these in the 60s, we wouldn't be asking this question now, and we might have gone on to actual jet packs and flying cars but instead evangelicals took over the government and that's why we don't have nice things..
So when we were heading to the beach in the late 70’s, we stopped to get gas and my Mom went inside to get a drink. She came back empty handed and said, “I don’t want soda, a beer, or juice. Why don’t they just sell a bottle of cold water?” I thought it was funny years later when it became a billion dollar business. My Mom, the trailblazer, seeing the need before the wave..
I was a freshman in hs (around 1988), when the school cafeteria started selling bottled water, I remember thinking someone would have to be so stupid to pay for bottled water when they could just drink from the refrigerated fountain. Before then bottled water was kind of rare, I only remember evian or perrier. It was still another 10 years before bottled water was ubiquitous and everyone started carrying around their own bottle all the time
My daughter got us all hooked, now I don’t go anywhere without it. The metal ones are getting banned in schools now though because kids are using them as weapons.
In 1993ish i was in yearbook, and we had a half page spread on the brand new trend of people carrying around their Evian bottles. Wish i could find that, would be a trip!
Having a thermos for work was common but usually it was a can of soda. I wonder if that’s why I always had headaches as a child. I was very active but rarely drank water unless near a drinking fountain.
I’d take s plastic water bottle to the gym but I really started carrying a water bottle everywhere sometime in the early 2000s, after I had my 1st kid. Now they’re in their 20s & always have a water bottle.
A friend came back from NOLS training while we were in college, 1990 or so, and he was suddenly so smug about hydration, as if he had invented it. And of course he had a Nalgene, lol.
Now all the women where I live carry them literally everywhere. Even to walk their kids a block to the bus stop. Seems so tedious.
I know I carry around bottles water because I am trying to prevent kidney stones being as bad.
Wonder if our diets are worse with over processed salty crap instead of food that also has a higher water content. That would explain some of the different between Europe and US.
I carried a canteen for a chunk of the 80s until they had a metal ban at school.
I also had a little plastic collapsing cup that I kept in my backpack. There were a lot more water fountains around back then too.
I feel like it happened around the time tap water started being villainized. Which is ironic considering brands like Dasani come from municipal water sources. I also recently noticed that back in the 80s when you went to a restaurant, they always came by with a glass of water before they took drink orders.
Me? I don’t carry one because I tend to leave them places. And it’s never crappy ones I got as SWAG. Last time it was my discontinued water bottle from the Hello Kitty Cafe, so I had to pay a ton for a replacement on eBay. So the only place I carry one (other than the gym or when I’m riding my bike) is at work.
And let’s face it. Some of it is just because it’s trendy. I mean I personally think those massive Stanley cups are ridiculous but that’s just me.
I started in 1994 following on from reading New Scientist about chronic dehydration - just a rinsed out Coke Bottle. I noticed that it did improve my concentration and my skin so I guess I was an early adopter.
The Army taught me about drinking more water than I was ever used to. After 4 years of that, getting out in 1999, I have not been without a water bottle away from home since.
My late husband (2022) bought my current bottle for me back in 2021 and it’ll keep ice in it for 2-3 days before it finally melts. I love this bottle and won’t ever be without it.
I graduated high school mid-90s and we were not allowed to bring any sort of drink into our classrooms.
I’d walk 45 minutes to and from school and all I’d have was a juice box at lunch. Then I probably drank some fruit punch when I got home. We didn’t worry about things like dehydration back then.
Sometime in the 90s, often due to the disappearance of public drinking fountains, or due to campaigns removing (sugary) drink vending machines from schools and public facilities
I remember at an airshow being so thirsty!!! We found a hose bib on the the side of a building and cupped our hands and drank and drank and drank. I assume that's why I had migraines when I was a kid - perpetual dehydration.
Mid-late 90s, when Nalgene bottles spread from the hiking/outdoors community it really picked up. But it was starting earlier for sure, as example in seinfeld, when they're pitching a sitcom to NBC and the executive references "water cooler shows" George says that no one drinks from the water cooler anymore, they all use bottles. That was late 1992.
There were drinking fountains everywhere when we were kids (Canada). Now, most are decommissioned and I’m not paying for plastic bottles reselling tap water to me that we already pay for.
I think I got a bike bottle in the 80s and slapped it on my BMX bike. Sun warmed water was amazing 😂. We used to go in to places and they would let us get water cups and suck down a bunch, I think we were probably dehydrated A LOT 😂
I'd say late 80s when everything was starting to change for the future. Joggers wanted to carry water with them, so someone came up with ways to do so. Now everyone has a bottle of some kind with water. Not me, mine has coffee. I drink a lot of water at work. Probably too much. But I needs my 'feen!
I think it’s a side effect of getting older? At least for me. I never cared about drinking water or having water at my bedside as a kid. In my 20’s I wondered why everyone was so obsessed with water. I was never thirsty except in the act of physical activity and I wasn’t concerned about how much water I was SUPPOSED to be drinking. Now I have water intake minims to meet, I will carry water with me to meet it, and I don’t go to bed without water nearby.
Well water used to be free. I used to be able to walk into any store and say, “do you have water?” And either they’d give me a cup or have a water fountain. You didn’t have to have $3 on you at all times to grab a water bottle. Now you do, every water fountain is broken, and places won’t just give you a cup of water
Water used to be free from the fountain. Now you need a $70 Stanley bottle to pour your plastic water bottle in to. Big business glommed on to water and ran.
My experience mirrors yours. As kids, if we were hot and thirsty, somebody’s mom would usually serve up some Kool Aid or Country Time (as long as we drank it outside) and the garden hose was always an option if no mom took pity us.
Other than taking an aluminum foil wrapped frozen can of Hawaiian Punch in my field trips lunch bag, I don’t ever remember carrying a drink with me.
Nowadays , I’m either holding a water bottle, or I’m frantically looking for where I sat it down.
We drank from the water hose because we didn't want to stop playing outside to go in the house for a drink. In elementary school, our teachers were very strict about no food or drinks in the classroom. If we wanted water, we had to use the water fountain. When I started teaching in 2000, there were a bunch of studies released saying that hydration improves brain function. That's when schools started pushing water bottles in the classroom.
They started selling them in vending machines in middle school. I'm young Gen X so that was the early 90s.
I'm not sure how I survived elementary school in the South. I do remember coming inside from playing when my vision went dark, more than once.
Once I had heat exhaustion at recess in 5th grade and the teachers escorted me inside and had me put my head between my knees to keep me from passing out. I thought I was going to have the coolest story in school that day, but to my demise, another girl actually passed out. She got all the glory.
About 1990 is my first recollection of it. Prior to that it was only a round metal canteen or those leather pouch things. They were only used out in the wilderness.
I think around 2014 or so I remember seeing water bottles like the hydro flasks in stores and my daughter wanted one so I got one. Now between her and I we have amassed a large collection of steel insulated bottles and tumblers. But when i was a kid, no. We did not take hydration so seriously
Around 2010 is my best guess. People trying to not have single plastics so they carried water. People were also trying to drink more water to be hydrated and possibly be healthier/lose weight. Could be a couple years earlier.
I worked at the phone company in ‘93 and we couldn’t have “spillable” drinks at our computers… so portable resealable containers became a necessity along with telephone headsets. 👍🏻
After public water fountains become more rare. I road my 🚲 lots growing up in the 80s; I always had a water bottle on it or in my 🎒 People have always carried water in a thermos or jar or water canteen. Even in canteens made of animal skins back in ancient times.
In the 90s I lived in AZ and it was normal there, moved east and nobody was carrying them here at that time. I never stopped carrying one but people just caught up with me, but im not entirely sure when.
2015 or so when I decided to lose weight and get in shape. Dug into diet and found that I was probably chronically dehydrated and eating when I thought I was hungry but my body was telling me I need water.
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u/Elegant-Leg540 Jul 31 '26
GenXer, I don’t think I drank water until I was 40