Let's settle this one at the dinner table once and for all.
You're standing at the cooler. Same water, two packages: an aluminum can or a plastic bottle. Does it actually matter? Short answer: yes, more than almost any other swap you make in a day. Here are the real numbers.
The recycling math
Aluminum is infinitely recyclable. A can gets collected, melted down, and is back on the shelf as a new can in about 60 days - with zero loss of quality. It can do that loop forever. Aluminum is the most recycled beverage container on the planet, and recycling it takes about 95% less energy than making new aluminum.
Plastic gets one shot, maybe. In Canada, plastic bottles are recycled at rates below 30%. And "recycled" plastic usually isn't a bottle again — it's downcycled into lower-grade material once, then landfilled. A bottle that misses the bin can take up to 400 years to break down, and it doesn't disappear — it becomes microplastics.
What actually happens to your empty
Here's the part most people don't know: recycling systems are built around value. Used aluminum is worth real money, so it gets collected, sorted, and reprocessed. Used plastic is barely worth hauling, so a huge share of what you put in the blue bin never becomes anything again.
When you finish a can, you're handing the system something it wants. When you finish a plastic bottle, you're mostly handing it a problem.
The cottage test
Forget the stats for a second. Picture the places you actually drink water in the summer: the dock, the boat, the beach, the golf course, the campsite. Now picture what washes up on shore. It's never aluminum cans - they're worth too much to leave behind. It's plastic bottles.
That's why no-glass venues, festivals, beaches, and pools love cans: they don't shatter, they don't blow away half-crushed into the lake, and people actually return them.
"But what about the liner?" and other fair questions
Do cans have plastic liners? Yes - a microscopically thin food-safe lining, the same used across the entire beverage industry. It's a fraction of a gram, versus a bottle that's 100% plastic.
Isn't making new aluminum energy-intensive? Making virgin aluminum is. That's exactly why recycling it is such a win - 95% energy savings - and why the industry runs on recycled content.
What about just using a refillable bottle? Honestly: great, do that too. But for the grab-and-go moments — events, retail, the cooler at the corner store - the question isn't can vs. refillable, it's can vs. plastic bottle. And that one's not close.
Where JUG lands in this
JUG exists because of this math. We take Canadian water, filter it with reverse osmosis, and put it in a 473 mL aluminum can - the package that actually gets a second life. It's why golf courses, venues, and offices across Ontario are making the switch from plastic.
Water in a can. It's a JUG Thing!