Does amassing hoard of ‘sustainable’ mugs miss the point?
The Stanley Tumbler, this year’s smash hit, is, at first glance, a win for the planet.
It’s durable. It’s reusable. Unlike the throwaway plastic bottles it’s meant to replace, it doesn’t generate mountains of plastic trash.
But the craze has sparked some less-than-sustainable behavior. People boast about owning dozens of them. When Target released special editions, including a much-coveted Starbucks version, it caused a mini stampede.
Some trend forecasters say the fad is already over. “Some millennials or Gen Z are already embarrassed to carry a Stanley,” said Casey Lewis, who writes the trendspotting newsletter After School. “And we know what’s going to happen,” she said. They’ll sit unused, gather dust on a shelf or in a basement, or “worstcase scenario, they’ll end up in landfills.”
Stanley mania is a story of how marketing, influencers and the power of social media converged to produce a cultural phenomenon. Stanley sold an estimated 10 million Quencher water tumblers in 2023, and the company’s total sales for that year are expected to have reached $750 million, up from less than $100 million in 2020. The cups commonly cost $35 to $45 but can resell for a lot more, and the #StanleyCup hashtag has been viewed billions of times on TikTok.
But the trend is also an example of how a growing universe of eco-conscious products — things originally marketed to be sustainable — can morph into a catalyst for simply buying more, potentially canceling out environmental benefits. Entranceways have become cluttered with totes meant to save us from the scourge of single-use plastic bags. Cupboards are accumulating odd gadgets, like collapsible steel straws or reusable food containers, meant to cut down on the single-use kind.
“The point of a reusable mug is that, theoretically, you only need one. And you’re replacing dozens or even hundreds of single-use cups with that one reusable mug,” said Sandra Goldmark of Columbia University’s Climate School. But if a person buys lots of those mugs, “you’ve got a lot of water-drinking to do,” she said, to make up for the environmental impact of manufacturing them.
Products that brand themselves as sustainable, like the Stanley Tumbler, tend to get customers’ attention. A study last year by McKinsey that examined five years of sales data across 44,000 brands found a clear correlation between consumer spending and sustainability-related marketing.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. For most products, switching to a more sustainable alternative wouldn’t necessarily mean more consumption. You might not eat more vegetables just because they were grown sustainably, for example.
And most Stanley mug owners probably don’t have museum-scale collections or even more than just one or two. Even if they do, the climate toll would be far lower than, say, driving a gas-thirsty SUV or flying around in jets.
Whether a sustainable product truly helps the environment comes down to how much they sustain their owner’s interest. Researchers have coined a term to measure the amount of time a person must reuse an alternative before it fully offsets the single-use product it replaces: the environmental payback period. A 2020 paper found that for straws, coffee cups and forks, metal alternatives had to be used the longest in order to break even.
Several things play into that long payback period. For one thing, making stainless steel is a polluting and energy-intensive process that usually relies on coal, a fossil fuel.
Stanley advertises that its products last a lifetime. But more recent marketing has emphasized limited-edition drops and a dazzling array of colors, attributes that are catnip to collectors.
Stanley said it is making an effort to manufacture its products from more sustainable materials. The mug’s manufacturer, PMI, which also owns the Aladdin brand, says Quencher tumblers are made with 90% recycled steel.
But across all Stanley products, only 23% are made of recycled steel, according to the company. It aims to raise that to at least 50% by 2025.
Philippe Pernstich of Minimum, a carbon accounting software platform said that would be tricky. For one, there’s a shortage of recycled steel because it’s in such high demand. Making steel from raw materials is much costlier and energy intensive, and emits planet-warming pollutants.
Stanley said in a statement that “sustainability is a core value” and that its products were “eliminating the need for single-use plastics.”