Kind of a rant — I drink water and flavored-water beverages, and I don’t wanna buy 24-packs of water and trust my local municipality to recycle. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. Either way, it’s not recycle, it’s “reduce, reuse, recycle.” I’ll drink a Gatorade (Zero) and reuse it a few times and then toss it.
But if I want a reusable bottle — there’s one by Aladdin (Thermos) I like, and one by Zojirushi, I’ve bought two of each over the years. Just tossed the Zojirushi. Zojirushi is a Japanese brand, very high quality, but a bit over-engineered. It’s got this rubber gasket and plug that, you can clean them daily, they get black spots. Not sure if it’s mould or what, but it’s kinda gross and I don’t like it. The Aladdin/Thermos one is a bit better, didn’t think there was any mould anywhere until I dropped it, the cap flew out, mould farm inside! Nowhere that touched the beverage so that was nice. But I’m kinda done with both of them. I would rather just waste plastic than risk drinking from a mouldy reusable cup.
Are there reusable bottles that aren’t mould farms?
I had a Zojiirushi in the past too. I agree, it takes too much effort to clean. I now use a wide mouth bottle that just has a screw top lid, no straw or drinking apparatus besides the large open mouth. No gaskets or anything else. It’s only two surfaces to clean and requires no disassembly, other than taking the lid off. It’s much easier to keep clean.
The brand doesn’t matter. Just get a wide mouthed metal bottle of whatever cheap brand is around. None of them have engineered a new alloy that makes their bottles better or anything. Just make sure it’s double-hulled if insulation is important, which most are.