In honor of World Refill Day, we’ve stripped back PATH to everything it was always about in the first place, the bottle and refilling. PATH Air is here, and it’s ready to expose an important beverage battle, single-use vs. refilling.
The story of PATH started while three friends were at a local store during the holiday season; as they stood in the bottled water aisle, they noticed the shelf was stocked floor-to-ceiling with throwaway water bottles. It was 2014, and they paused amid the festive holiday rush to ask a simple but radical question, “Why is there so much single-use plastic? Isn’t there a better way to drink bottled water?”
That moment of clarity sparked a vision for a better PATH forward, one where hydration and sustainability could go hand in hand. Instead of yet another disposable bottle, the founders imagined a bottle that could be refilled over and over, disrupting the disposable beverage culture.
Fueled by this mission, the friends set out to create the first refillable, recyclable aluminum water bottle packaged with purified water, a bottled water that isn’t really about the water at all but the bottle.
Enter PATH Air, the proof of this concept to end single-use. Every refillable bottle is a statement that we don’t have to accept the status quo of waste. As PATH’s founders proved, big change can begin with everyday people asking, “Why not a better way?”
If you walk down any grocery store’s bottled water aisle, you’ll see we’re drowning in single-use plastic bottles. Globally, an estimated 1.3 billion plastic bottles are used every single day; that’s about 1 million bottles per minute.
In the United States alone, people purchase roughly 50 billion single-use water bottles each year, yet over 60 million of those bottles are tossed out every day. The vast majority never get recycled, and about 80% end up in landfills or as litter. A typical plastic bottle can take around 450 years to decompose, but the truth is, microplastics just get smaller and smaller; they never truly go away.
Why it’s time to refill for our health
Studies on the human health impact of single-use plastics are starting to emerge, and they aren’t pretty.
One study showed us that plastics accumulate in our brains and may have serious implications for brain health. Microplastics Are Accumulating in the Brain at Alarming Rates.
Another study showed just how much microplastics are entering our bodies from drinking single-use bottled water. New Study: Plastic Bottled Water Contains 240,000 Nano Plastic Particles Per Liter.
Many more studies have found high levels of plastic in babies' blood, human and dog testicles, and our hearts and arteries.
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New Study Finds High Concentrations of Plastics in the Placentae of Infants Born Prematurely.
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UNM Researchers Find Microplastics in Canine and Human Testicular Tissue.
- Microplastics in arteries linked to heart disease risk.
Single-use bottled water contains at least double the levels of microplastics that are found in tap water. Scientists suggest lowering exposure and ingestion of microplastics to stop drinking from single-use plastic bottles and instead drinking tap water that is filtered.
World Refill Day and PATH Air
Fast forward to World Refill Day 2025, and the PATH team wanted to get the world's attention in a fresh way. PATH decided to take over the day's narrative with PATH Air, a special edition PATH bottle sold empty and containing nothing but air, to drive home a simple truth: the water was never the point; the bottle is. By humorously offering a bottle of "air," PATH drives home the message about how absurd it is to keep buying bottle after bottle when what we really need is just one good bottle and some great refilling action.
Choosing the PATH forward
The Choosing the PATH forward message is clear, and it's time to leave the "use it once and trash it" mentality behind. Whether you're a student, a CEO, a parent, or an elected leader, choosing to refill is a simple but radical act of hope. It says we cherish our planet's future more than a moment's convenience and are willing to break habits and forge new ones.
A reusable bottle might seem like a small thing, but multiplied by millions, it's world-changing.
Ready to celebrate World Refill Day? Cheers to PATH Air, because single-use could never pull this one off.
Resources
https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/microplastics-in-arteries-linked-to-heart-disease-risk
https://hscnews.unm.edu/news/hsc-newsroom-post-microplastics-testicular
https://drinkpathwater.com/blogs/news/microplastics-are-accumulating-in-the-brain-at-alarming-rates
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/reusable-water-bottle-market
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ENVIRONMENT-PLASTIC/0100B275155/