Water or any drink brand has long been iconised. It started with Coca Cola and expensive marketing campaigns to make us think if we drank Coke we were super cool. An obesity crisis and your dentists worst nightmare later coke was replaced by water, all the cool kids carried an Evian and the cool grown ups drank a Perrier in the 1980s, until we figured out single use plastic was a disaster for the environment and carbonated drinks have their own negative impact on our bodies. So we went to coffee, carrying a Starbucks meant you were an upwardly mobile Gen Z supporting fair trade growers and paying a premium for a cup that was completely recyclable biodegradable, still single use, unless you bought into their discount member program, purchasing a stainless steel mug and remembering to wash it out before you left your apartment in the morning for your daily fix. It didn't take off, well not really anyway. We still have the very big issue of convenience generated single use plastic in the beverage space.

So then came along Stanley 1913 a British company and ignited the imaginations of millennials across the globe who bought into a $50 reusable travel cup and turned Stanley into a unbelievable success story at approx $750 million annual revenue in just a few short years.

The Stanley brand began 1913 when inventor William Stanley Jr. invented the all steel vacuum bottle. He patented the design on September 2, 1913, and the company was established soon after that but it’s taken a surge in recent sales, different coloured models marketed mainly to women and a few extremely successful viral campaigns on social media to fuel the brands meteoric rise. I haven’t bought in, the design is clunky to me and the price stratospheric but it shows when a brand gets lucky or captures the imagination of the moment miracles can happen.

My reusable path water bottle has created the same kinda warm vibes for me. I’d never heard of the water bottle brand until recently and bought mine because I was forced to, it was a purchase of convenience and I am so glad the vendor in question at LAX, the airport gave me no other option. I flinched at the price initially $7 for a bottle of water not realising my Path Water bottle would become my latest accessory.

I am all for joining the cause to eliminate single use plastic and have done my best to stop buying plastic bottles of water wherever I can over the last few years, of course I am not perfect especially at fast food restaurants where substituting soda for water in my meal deal means another plastic bottle.

Now I am using my Path water bottle regularly even this habit has changed, dropping the meal deal for a couple of tacos or veggie sandwich instead, and drinking my own water in my Path Water bottle. When you read about all the great work Path are doing aside from their main lane and see how great looking the bottles are I am sure more people will go in search of this brand.

It’s hard to change peoples minds, it’s even harder to change behaviour but I am so encouraged by Jaden smiths Hollywood restaurant I Love You that began life as a food truck on Skid Row serving healthy plant based food on a pay it forward model of pay what you can afford and now is popping up in bricks and mortar locations like 1880 Century Park E, Ste 1600, Los Angeles, CA 90067, in Los Angeles.

There is an appetite for change even though  as Martin Luther King said “change does not happen on its own”, but requires "continuous struggle" and determined, persistent effort against injustice; I’d like to add to that convenience and greed and zero social responsibility.

Thanks to Path Water for creating a reusable water bottle with such a clean design I think it's going to change the way people keep their water handy and close, you've certainly gotten a new soldier here. Let’s  hope it doesn’t take another 100 years (Stanley 1913)