Steel is mostly recycled. Pet is very much not. Pet does leach (as microplastic). No point in buying plastic bottles unless they're pla. Just reuse a water/soda bottle you bought on a whim.

I read PET actually is recycled extensively. I mean, you need to recycle it, but it's economically viable to actually recycle it rather than just make it "someone else's problem".

Iirc it gets downcycled, not recycled. You can't make bottles out of it anymore, it goes into textiles or something. And that's in the highly optimistic case in which it makes it to a recycling center, which doesn't happen for 80% of plastic.

Steel is not recycled by consumers. You cannot put steel in a recycling bin.

You _ may_ be able to take steel to a resource recovery centre. However if the travel uses oil or electricity that comes from coal, I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up being worse for the environment than a PET bottle.

With regards to leaching, the FDA has declared PET bottles safe for repeated use.

Electricity coming from coal is not something you address by using plastic bottles.

There's almost nothing worse than forever plastics at this point in time. They're everywhere, they're toxic, and we don't know how to fix it.

Steel is recycled as often as it's economically feasible to do. It's not hand selected by consumers because there's already a whole process for dealing with metals in general that's been in place for a hundred years. Which is ideal really, the less I have to select by hand the better.

Here it's scavengers stripping it out of refuse (and everything that's not bolted to the ground, really). In the US it's probably put on a barge and stripped in Mexico or something, no idea. It's rarely thrown out though, as it's very expensive and very useful.

The FDA is also cool with BPA, pfas, teflon, etc. Don't rely too much on it. PET is safe, ish. As i wrote: use it, avoid buying new. It does leach microplastic but those are everywhere so it's "safe", and by that I mean it's unavoidable "background pollution" these days, as there's microplastic even inside produce.

> They're everywhere, they're toxic, and we don't know how to fix it.

True, but they're also good carbon sinks.

So is grey goo, but can we please not do that?

> Electricity coming from coal is not something you address by using plastic bottles.

That’s not my point and I think you’re deliberately misinterpreting it.

> In the US it's probably put on a barge and stripped in Mexico or something, no idea. It's rarely thrown out though, as it's very expensive and very useful.

This sounds like wishful thinking. Do you have any evidence to support this claim? “Don’t worry, just trash it and it’ll probably get sorted in Mexico” doesn’t inspire confidence.

Steel is at 80%

https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-iron-steel...

PET is at 30%

https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...

Is your particular bottle going to be part of the 20%? IDK... but it's more likely by definition that the PET one is going to be part of the 70%, and is also more damaging in every possible way.

Except when dropping it on your foot.

Oh and a note I neglected to make: the recycling failure scenarios are wildly different for steel and PET: steel is easily disposed of by the environment, and doesn't really cause any problems, in fact it's a great oceanic fertilizer.

PET is a horror show in the failure scenario.

Yeah that is a good point.

How does a steel water bottle break

dent, crush, lid or seal failure (which can't be cheaply/practically made of steel)

have been using this one for more than a decade now:

https://www.wasser-aktuell.com/products/1-0l-trekkatanka%E2%...

small dents, but no no issues with lid or seal

I’ve been using a Zojirushi thermos as a water bottle and it has been with me for 6 years.

There’s replacement parts on their website to get worn out pieces which is convenient.