;)
Why I hate Nalgene bottles
Monday, December 12, 2011 at 10:35AM ;)
When Nalgenes go bad . . .Few outdoor product manufacturers have attained the market dominance enjoyed by the Nalge Company, once an obscure maker of laboratory storage containers, after company president Marsh Hyman discovered his son’s Boy Scout troop was using their one-liter bottles as canteens early in the 1970s. The subsequent rebranding of Nalgene Outdoor Products was successful beyond the wildest dreams of marketing people who had previously relied on guys wearing lab coats and pocket protectors as customers. So successful, in fact, that I seriously doubt anyone reading this has not at some point had a drink of water from a Nalgene.
I drank the water, and the Kool-Aid, early on. The original one-liter white HDPE bottles with the wide cap were light, tough, and fit perfectly in the side pockets of my Camp Trails frame pack. They were easy to fill from a stream or bucket, and didn’t leak. You could chill the contents with ice cubes, or freeze the whole bottle with impunity. The Austrian Olicamp bottles I’d been using were leakproof and tough, too, but had a tiny opening and a fiddly two-piece top, so—despite years of yeoman service, including a backpacking trip spanning southern Arizona and three mountain ranges—I shelved them and shamelessly embraced their replacements.
Smaller Nalgene bottles that soon followed were ideal for toiletries, spices, and first-aid supplies. In fact, so enamored was I of Nalgene products that I spent an absurd sum special-ordering some of the first Nalgene 20-liter jerry cans then available in the U.S. I strapped two of them into my FJ40 and thought it was a pretty stylish setup.
The facade began to crack—literally—a few years later. Previously I’d noticed that the odd small bottle I used for toiletries or other incidentals had degraded. The translucent plastic would turn dull and opaque, then tiny stress cracks would appear. Forceful pressure with a finger would punch right through the material. At first I blamed this on the stuff I was putting in them (although an internal voice chided me that the containers were originally intended for lab use, and thus presumably should stand up to contents a lot more caustic than Suave Green Apple shampoo). But then one morning on a remote beach in Mexico I reached into the back of the Land Cruiser to pull out one of those stylish jerry cans, and the side split open right under the handle, spewing half my water supply into the sand.
Still I doubted my own doubts. UV exposure certainly could have been at fault in the jerry cans’ demise (inspection had shown the second one to be compromised as well)—although I’d had previous plastic water containers last longer. Regardless, my confidence was now shaken. I switched to Nalgene’s harder Lexan water bottles, but wondered why I should have to. The more oxidized white bottles I found in my pile of assorted Nalgenes, the more annoyed I became. (I have no idea if “oxidation” is the correct term for the problem, but that’s what I called it.) Once I narrowly avoided disaster when a camera bouncing around in my center console punched a small hole in an old six-ounce Nalgene bottle of window cleaner I kept there. Fortunately the hole was above the level of the liquid and I discovered it before it tipped over onto the camera.
Whatever the mechanism might be—UV degradation, shampoo corrosion, planned obsolescence (just kidding, Nalgene)—I’ve concluded that white HDPE Nalgene bottles seem to have a finite, potentially annoying or even hazardous, life expectancy. I can’t be sure what it is—given the hodgepodge of examples I’ve purchased over the years, there’s no way to determine the age of a compromised bottle. The apparent capriciousness of it is odd too—one two-liter square bottle I know I’ve had for ten years is still in fine, pliable shape. But the situation has reached the point where I look at every Nalgene not purchased the week before with suspicion—and that’s no way to have to view one’s outdoor equipment. I still use the small bottles for toiletries, having as yet found no leakproof substitute made in as wide a variety of sizes, but, like any disillusioned disciple, my former accolades have turned to acrimony, and I now spurn every Nalgene product for which I can find a reasonable substitute. Steel Wedco or plastic Scepter jerry cans hold bulk water; and an indestructible NATO canteen carries drinking water on hikes.
30-year-old Olicamp bottles - still good . . .Then again, I just might go back to those Austrian-made Olicamp bottles. You see, out of curiosity, while writing this I dug them out of the recesses of my gear storage—they were right there next to the SVEA stove and Sigg Tourist cook kit. Thirty years after I carried them across southern Arizona, they’re still perfectly usable.
Anyone at Nalgene listening?
Reader Comments (5)
You're complaining that a piece of gear has a finite life span! Are you kidding? You even hypothesized a reasonable conclusion related to UV degradation yet you make a completely unjustifiable correlation to other bottles that have been in a dark closet absent of UV and finish with a preposterous question about the folks at Nagle listening.
I have a pair of 20+ y/o lexan Nagelene Bottles that have been dropped while rock climbing, bounced around in the back of the truck, and left in the sun, snow, and lots of other harsh conditions. They will eventually be trashed, but they have lived a harder life than most of my other gear.
Do you expect your underwear to last forever too?
Mitch, thanks for your comment, but you answered your own question. What I noted was that UV exposure was NOT satisfactory as an explanation for the degradation, since other Nalgene bottles stored in the dark degraded as well, and other brands of plastic water containers I owned that were older (and cheaper) and had received more UV exposure were still okay. Since I wrote the piece I've had two people relate similar experiences with the white Nalgene bottles. Your response refers to your Lexan Nalgenes, which, if you'll read through the piece again, you'll remember I distinguished from the white ones. I haven't experienced the same syndrome with the Lexan bottles.
I also noted the unpredictable nature of the degradation. And that's the point, isn't it? If you can't predict a reasonable useful lifespan for a container, you must question why you should be using the product. I maintain a Nalgene bottle used to store shampoo in a toilet kit should last longer than three or four years. Do you disagree?
And, yes - if I owned a pair of underwear I wore infrequently and kept stored in a drawer, and which fell apart when I pulled them out a couple years hence, I'd be just as annoyed. Fortunately my underwear isn't made by Nalgene . . .
The failure of the shampoo bottle was most likely caused by Environmental Stress Cracking. HDPE is particularly vulnerable to this condition, especially under long-term exposure to liquid chemicals like soaps and detergents.
Wow, sorry to hear about your experience. I have two year old Nalgene bottles that I have taken around the world, they have been frozen, the have had boiling water put in them and thrown in the bottom of my sleeping bag to keep me from freezing, they have been dropped, thrown, kicked and they look and work as good as they did day one. I love my Nalgene bottles!
I own two 24oz Nalgene water bottles but these days they are used only around the house. Why? Because now I hike/camp with reused 24oz plastic Gatorade bottles. I find them to be very light weight, strong and affordable. If one gets rather banged up I recycle it and buy a new bottles of Gatorade; it helps that I like Gatorade!
Sometimes it is important to pay up for expensive gear. Other times however, one can find satisfactory or even very high quality solutions on the cheap. 24 oz water bottles are one such item.
Cee-Jay