OPINION
Brands like Liquid Death have made plain old water the hottest drink around — but how do cans impact sustainability and taste? The Telegraph’s Xanthe Clay explains.
It’s the Meat Loaf of mineral water. Cans of still and sparkling Liquid Death (complete with an attention-seeking name and death metal styling) have become the hottest chilled drink around, with soaring sales and a valuation of US$1.4 billion ($2.3b) — not bad given it only launched in the US in 2017. And now it’s here.
Marketing Week called it “a brand built from packaging and promotion, and little else”. Never mind: it’s making water cooler than Coke, so health advocates should be punching the air. Environmentalists may be happy too, as many believe that for water, a can beats glass or plastic.
But how does water from a can taste? I enlisted the help of “water sommelier” Milin Patel, who’s just arrived back from the Bled Water Forum in Slovenia, where experts taste water like wine.
“The container does make a big difference to the flavour. I prefer water out of glass bottles, as plastic can taste chemical. Cans have a metallic taint, although that can be helped by lining the can with epoxy resin — although that’s still more plastic,” Patel says. Such linings aren’t recycled, they are incinerated as part of the aluminium recovery. They can also contain BPA and BPS plastics, which are implicated in hormone issues and weight gain. So look for BPA-free logos on the cans.
While carbonation can raise acidity levels (making the water taste sour) most of the flavour, “is down to the TDS — total dissolved solids per litre — which is the measure of minerals in the water,” says Patel. The higher the TDS, the more flavour, plus potentially more health benefits from those minerals. Three out of three ain’t bad.
Sure, tap water has the lowest carbon footprint, but the reality is that grabbing water on the go is part of life, and those ubiquitous plastic bottles are a huge issue. They can be recycled, but only a limited amount of times, and most aren’t so they clog up landfill.
The average household in the UK uses 480 plastic bottles per year, but recycles only 270 of them. Glass bottles can be recycled limitlessly, but they are heavy and fragile, increasing the fuel needed to transport them. In contrast, aluminium is sturdy and lightweight — and while it is environmentally costly to mine and produce, it’s easy to recycle unlimited times. A green choice then, provided it is recycled. Chuck the cans in the bin and there’s no benefit. Plus, unlike bottles, most cans aren’t resealable, meaning you have to drink them in one go.
This story was originally published in The Daily Telegraph UK.
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