If you have a different Yeti water bottle for every day of the month, you're probably defeating the purpose of owning reusable water bottles.
A Redditor shared a screenshot of one family seemingly doing way too much when it came to their affinity for the high-priced bottles and coolers.
In a post to the r/Anticonsumption subreddit, a screenshotted Instagram photo is captioned "@YETI my mom's your biggest fan," with somewhere around 200 Yeti water bottles and nearly a dozen coolers displayed on a kitchen counter.
The Redditor added context in their title, saying, "One family decided to count how many Yeti products they bought over the years." They claimed that the top comment on Instagram in response was Yeti offering to add even more products to the family's massive collection.
The family's apparent obsession with Yeti products is a clear case of overconsumption. The trend can be even more blatant when it comes to products that are status symbols, like Yeti bottles or Stanley cups.
Turning to reusable bottles to replace disposable ones is a noble concept. Disposable plastic bottles not only waste money but are also prone to ending up in methane-producing landfills if not recycled properly. They also can shed potentially dangerous microplastics into nature or even into our own water and food.
That being said, while the production of disposable plastics requires a lot of resources and pollution, premium water bottles like Stanley or Yetis necessitate even more, as ABC News detailed.
"If you want to compare a reusable coffee mug to, let's say, a single-use paper cup -- you have to use that steel cup for a long time, many months, maybe even many years, depending on how it was made in the first place, to earn back that investment of energy and materials," circularity expert Sandra Goldmark told ABC News.
Consumers should be leaning into the durability and high quality of these products as opposed to discarding them when they go out of style. In a similar vein, companies contribute to the problem by encouraging consumers to unnecessarily add to their collections with limited-edition products.
Redditors were taken aback by the family's immense Yeti collection.
"Wow — I was feeling guilty for owning 2 cups," one wrote in.
"I thought the whole point of buying stuff that expensive was to not buy a lot of it," a user pondered.
Another Redditor jokingly asked: "Is this a family of 47?"
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