Why you should stop reusing your refillable water bottle

While drinking from reusable water bottles is environmentally friendly, it’s actually doing us more harm than good.

A new study found refillable drinking containers contain an alarming number of bacteria - in fact, they are crawling with more germs than your dog’s dirty toys.

The website Treadmill Reviews, commissioned EmLab P&K to conduct the research and found that reusable water bottles contain more than 300,000 colony-forming units per square centimeter (CFU/sq cm), while the average dog toy contains 3000.

They looked at four different types of water bottles - screw-top, slide-top, squeeze-top, and straw-top, and tested 12 athletes’ bottles that had not washed after a week’s use.

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The slide-top bottles were found to be the worst. The spot where your lips touch contains a shocking amount of bacteria, with more than 900,000 CFU/sq cm.

Scientists found traces of gram-positive cocci, which if consumed in high doses, can cause skin infections, pneumonia, or blood poisoning.

Squeeze-top bottles came in second with 162,000 CFU/sq cm, while screw-top containers hosted around 160,000 CFU/sq cm.

Although these bottles don’t contain as many harmful bacteria as slide-tops, the site said "Drinking from these bottles can still be worse than eating a meal from your pet's dish, or lapping up water from your kitchen sink.”

Those who drink from straw-top bottles will be pleased to know their bottles contain only 25 CFU/sq cm and the germs that were present were “mostly harmless."

"This may be because water drips to the bottom of the straw rather than sticking around to attract moisture-loving germs," Treadmill Reviews wrote.

Researchers also found that when it comes plastic or stainless steel bottles, “stainless steel is a better choice… Additionally, water bottles without crevices and tough-to-clean spots are less likely to host germs."

While the site doesn’t want you to now go and toss your reusable bottles away or switch to bottled water, they simply want you to be aware of the germs lurking around.

To avoid getting sick, the site recommends you opt for a straw-top, stainless steel bottle and wash it after each use, ideally with a weak bleach solution.

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