6 April, 2022

Plastic vs Metal Drink Bottles – Which Is Best?

We quite often get people asking us our opinion on what is the best drink bottle to buy. Should they get a plastic drink bottle or should they get a metal drink bottle? Each style has its benefits and in different categories, both are superior to the other. Below are some of the more common factors to consider when purchasing a drink bottle and to show which is better or not for each.

1. Price: This is a fairly easy one. If you are looking for a cheaper option, plastic easily beats metal. When bought in bulk you can get plastic drink bottles cheaply, for under $2 each, whereas the cheapest metal or aluminium style bottles you will find start at about mid $3 to over $4. So, if you are looking for a cheaper option, plastic drink bottles are the way to go.

2. BPA Free: This is an important factor. We know how bad BPA can be for your health, so you want to know the bottles you are drinking from are BPA free. On drinkbottles.com.au, all of our plastic bottles are BPA free. Stainless steel bottles contain no BPA, so you are safe to purchase these from anyone knowing you are safe. The only ones you need to be a little cautious of are aluminium bottles. They are not classed as food-grade, so many have a plastic lining on the inside and sometimes that lining contains BPA. You will find on our site that all the bottles we offer are BPA free, so in this respect, there are no clear winners.

3. Durability: In this category, the winner is absolutely your metal bottles. If you drop a plastic bottle from a height and it hits a hard surface, there is a good chance the plastic might split and then the bottle is useless. A metal bottle dropped from the same height would only have a dent, but the bottle itself would still be usable. The same goes for putting the bottles into a gym or sports bag. If you have a lot of weight on top, the plastic bottle could split, whereas the metal bottle won’t, so if you want a bottle to last a long time, metal is the way to go.

4. Branding Area: In this category, there is no clear winner. Both styles allow for either printing on one side or also doing a wrap print. The only slight advantage to some plastic bottles is when they are designed with a collar area, rather than the whole bottle being straight-sided. This allows you to separate your advertising to make it clearer and it is the perfect spot to isolate your website or phone number. The printing technology we have today means both styles can also have full-colour digital prints, so you won’t miss out on either one if that is your preferred print method. The only one where metal drink bottles have an advantage is if they can be engraved. Any type of print you put on bottles can potentially either wear off or get scratched off over time, especially with the power of dishwashers these days. If you have your bottle engraved, there is no chance of the branding coming off. It will last the life of the bottle, so in this respect, metal bottles have a slight edge.

5. Perceived Value: The clear winner here is metal. If you were to give someone a plastic and metal drink bottle and ask them which one they think cost more, metal would win every time, so if you are wanting to give bottles away to a more premium client, we would recommend you go with metal ones.

6. Insulation: Again, there is a clear winner here and that is metal drink bottles. Many come with double-walled insulation and some with vacuum sealing that can keep drinks hot or cold well past 24 hours. Plastic bottles are all single-walled and don’t really offer any type of insulation.

On reflection and based on the above, metal drink bottles are the clear winner, however, plastic bottles do serve a purpose due to their price point. They are still very functional and offer great value, but we are going to declare custom metal drink bottles as the winner.

The Drink Bottles Team