This is an article against our own commercial interest, and we would like you to read it before you buy anything from us.
The claim we will never make
Almost every steel food storage brand sells sustainability. Ocean plastic, single-use waste, a greener planet, a little leaf on the packaging.
We will not, and here is why.
In December 2023 the Consumentenbond — the organisation Dutch consumers trust most on exactly this kind of question — published research on reusable drinking bottles. Their conclusion:
“Rvs flessen blijken veruit het slechtst voor het milieu.”
Stainless steel bottles turn out to be by far the worst for the environment.
And the number that matters:
“Om de milieu-impact van een rvs fles gelijk te trekken met die van een PE-fles, moeten consumenten die langer dan 36 jaar gebruiken.”
To match the environmental impact of a reusable PE bottle, you would have to use a steel bottle for more than 36 years.
We sell steel bottles. That study is about us.
Why it is true
It comes down to production.
Making stainless steel is energy-intensive in a way that making plastic simply is not. Mining and refining the ore, the alloying, the forming — it carries a large, front-loaded carbon cost that is paid in full before the product ever reaches you.
A plastic bottle costs very little to make. That is, uncomfortably, its great environmental advantage. Its problem is what happens afterwards — but the manufacturing ledger is not close.
We could argue about the methodology. Life-cycle assessments make assumptions, and reasonable people dispute them. But we are not going to, for two reasons: the Consumentenbond is more credible on this than we are, and disputing an inconvenient finding is exactly the behaviour this company exists to object to.
So: steel is not automatically the green choice. It is not the green choice at all, unless one specific thing is true.
The one thing that changes the answer
You have to actually keep it.
The whole steel footprint is paid once, up front. Nothing you do afterwards adds much to it — and nothing you do afterwards removes it either. The only variable left is how long the object lasts.
A steel container used for fifteen years and a steel container replaced after three have the same manufacturing cost and wildly different verdicts. The material does not determine the outcome. The duration does.
Which means the sustainability argument for steel is not really about steel at all. It is about not buying another one.
Buying a steel container as an environmental gesture and replacing it in two years is worse than keeping the plastic one you already own.
If you are reading this while your current containers are working fine — keep them. That is the environmentally correct answer, and we are not going to give you a different one.
What we actually do about it
If duration is the only thing that can justify the footprint, then a company selling steel has exactly one honest obligation: make the thing last, and make it hard for you to need another one.
So:
- Ten years on the steel. Rust included, not quietly excluded in the small print. The guarantee →
- The seal is the only part that wears out — so we sell you a new one. Around €4, for as long as you own the product. You should not have to throw away a container because a ring of silicone lost its spring. Replacement seals →
- One material, one grade. 304, everywhere, so nothing in the range is the weak link that fails first.
That is not a green marketing programme. It is the minimum you would have to do to be allowed to sell steel with a straight face.
The two doors the research leaves open
1. Decades of use. The Consumentenbond gave a number: 36 years for a bottle. That is a long time. It is not an impossible time — steel does not have an expiry date, and a well-kept steel bottle at 36 is simply a steel bottle. Whether you get there is up to you, not the material.
2. End of life. Steel is recycled into steel, indefinitely, without degrading. Glass food containers, in the Netherlands, are incinerated — they don’t belong in the glasbak. Plastic is downcycled or burned. Ours goes to the oud ijzer and comes back as itself.
Those are the only two arguments available to us. We are going to stick to them, and we are not going to inflate them.
So why buy steel at all?
Not for the planet. We have just spent a page explaining why that argument does not hold on its own.
Buy it for what touches your food — which is the only claim we make, the only one we can defend, and the reason this company exists. Two materials: 304 stainless steel and one food-grade silicone seal. Steel all the way to the lid, and to the bottle cap. That is the entire list.
And then keep it for fifteen years, and the environmental question takes care of itself.
See what actually touches your food →
Food should be stored without doubt.
Source: Consumentenbond, “Herbruikbare plastic drinkfles blijkt beter voor milieu dan rvs-fles”, December 2023.