On a simple Saturday afternoon, with the sun’s full glare masked behind a few stray clouds, I just returned home after completing a grocery run. Setting my grocery-filled tote bags on the kitchen table, I pulled up a thread of reels to skim through while putting away the fresh ingredients. While the miscellaneous noise of the videos filled my kitchen, I sensed a slight fatigue in my movements. Grabbing a random portable coffee mug, I unscrew its lid, deciding that a coffee would accompany me later for a brisk walk. Swiping through the reels, I’m suddenly met with a video filled with an array of bright, stark colours. Hooked, I begin to watch someone go through each of their portable water bottles - or Stanley Quenchers, I soon learned they’re called - showing off their unique designs and gushing over the purchases. Do they really need that many? I think to myself, unaware of my seven (or more) tote bags, three water bottles, and four portable coffee cups around me.
There is an ever-increasing demand for long-lasting products that limit our use of their disposable counterparts. Tote bags replace their cheap plastic alternatives that are readily available at most stores’ check-out counters. Portable bottles, that can easily carry any beverage of our choice, combat paper coffee cups (that are actually lined with plastic, and are not very sustainable), and expendable plastic bottles.
The Stanley Quencher is one example of a dream-come-true for many consumers looking for a portable water bottle, offering a sturdy handle, an optional straw for easy water-drinking use, impressive durability, and great temperature retention (with the apparent ability to even preserve ice in the event of a fire, as a woman on TikTok documented from her experience when her Stanley Quencher was left in a car that burned down). While the brand itself is over 100 years old, the portable bottle was originally launched in 2016 and has recently reached a consumption craze. Globally, there are now over 7.2 billion views of TikTok uploads, including the hashtag ‘#StanleyCup’. Consumers are buying all sorts of colours and editions of the Stanley Quencher that they enjoy, even building display walls within their homes to show off their collections. Special editions of the product also receive a high level of attention; earlier this year, consumers were eager to snatch their own edition of the new Valentine’s Day Stanley Quencher, even racing through the store to grab them.
The Quencher, a product geared towards an environmental cause, has presented a unique yet ironic interplay between consumption and sustainability. There are a plethora of factors influencing our behaviour to purchase a sustainable product, going as far as our interpretations of sustainability and whether we want to identify with them or not. With Stanley Quenchers going viral and consumers spending to their heart's content, the trend has even branched out into buying accessories for your Stanley Quencher, such as “snack rings” and attachable pouches. Needless to say, the sensation has been described as ‘peak consumerism’ by interested observers online.
In buying goods like the Stanley Quencher, we initially communicate to others in society that environmental-conscientiousness is a part of our identity - and that we wish to be perceived as such by others, regardless of a fancy add-on and style our reusable cup could have. However, how sustainable are we through a ‘green’ purchase?
Back in 2011, Lyle K Grant highlighted a series of issues that manifest within the act of purchasing green products that we, as consumers, do. Such problems include its contribution towards an “illusion” that simply buying green products is enough of an effort from the consumers themselves. These sustainable purchases, or what Grant calls “green buying”, still work to “maintain resource-intensive economic growth [rather] than to solve environmental problems” (among a series of other negative results that green buying is disapproved of, such as energy inefficiency and missing out on opportunities for constructive solutions). Research from 2019 also shows the potential for a green purchase to lead to a “licensing-effect”, in which we allow ourselves to make a subsequent, non-sustainable purchase; we indulge ourselves and validate our comparatively worse purchase through our prior, alleged-environmentally-friendly efforts. Both green buying and the licensing effect appear to be symptoms of the problem: consumption disguised in green to provide comfort to the consumer, without addressing the root of the problem.
Buying numerous models, colours, and styles of the Stanley Quencher also inherently acts against the “reuse” narrative of using one cup. In Maastricht, this clash between consumption and sustainability is interestingly observable in the “Billie” cups that were introduced within Maastricht University nearly a year ago. A cup costs one euro, which students may receive back if they return the cup. When speaking to a small group of students in the university’s Tapijn study spaces earlier this Spring, they all shared their experience of often forgetting their Billie cups at home. This led them to simply spend another euro for a new cup, alongside their coffee purchase, and ultimately accumulate a collection of Billie cups at home. One girl I was speaking to had laughed, estimating a total of seven cups at home just for herself. While there is an element of convenience (as the cups are fairly light, returnable, and cheap), owning multiple cups per person is not the inherent intention of one reusable cup.
Ultimately, continuously buying such green products - akin to the Stanley Quencher craze - does not address the crux of the climate issue and instead seems to breed a cycle of consumption that may instead worsen the problem. So what can be done? Grant’s article does comment that green buying “reflects a dogma of consumer sovereignty that shifts responsibility for environmental problems to individuals who act in a free market rather than to corporate interests that motivate consumption and profit from it”. However, we as consumers do maintain the power to live consciously; as sustainable living is not satisfied by the mere products we choose to consume, we can enforce other efforts within our daily lifestyles. According to the UN Environment Programme, there are numerous changes we can make ourselves: buying locally-sourced ingredients, opting for a plant-based diet, using less energy in our own homes, avoiding private means of transport (such as using your own car), and to make mindful choices when travelling. Notably, the article also mentions the issue of overconsumption - and the importance of using what we already have to lessen waste as much as possible.
Green products, at a glance, are our way to communicate to others that we care about our environment. However, when cases such as the Stanley Quencher phenomenon occur, the flawed balance between sustainability and consumerism tips over. It becomes clear that consumption is the key pillar in the relationship, and sustainability reveals itself to be more of an instrument to the consumer. We aim to show sustainability as a part of our identity, though the products that relay this message are not enough from us to address the problem, and may actually exacerbate the situation through feeding into the cycle of consumerism. While buying a Stanley Quencher can encourage mindful consumption, like opting for reusable products instead of cheap disposables, we must be careful to not accept the comforting guise such products offer. Our actions do make a difference.
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