The Smartwater bottle is a hallmark of thru-hiking culture—so much so that we’ve written an entire ode to it. In a sport full of expensive gear that often trades weight savings for durability, the Smartwater bottle represents the dirtbag spirit at the heart of hardcore hiking culture: it's incredibly cheap but not imminently disposable, lightweight but surprisingly long-lasting. Smartwater bottles have a useful shape that fits well in skinny pack pockets and, more importantly, they're compatible with hikers' favorite water filter, the Sawyer Squeeze.
A single-use plastic bottle might seem misplaced among outdoor rec philosophies like Leave No Trace. But a closer look will reveal disposability is a core tenet of ultralight hiking—even pricey Dyneema packs and shelters are often only rated for one thru-hike, and ziploc and trash compactor bags are key UL items. This disposability has always been most apparent with plastic bottles, however. Hikers will push Smartwater bottles to their absolute limit, but they were never made to be reused to this degree, especially not for months on end. They crack, deform, leech chemicals, and ultimately contribute to the excessive plastic waste that many of us strive to mitigate in our everyday lives.
In 2025, three outdoor companies—Mazama Designs, CNOC, and Igneous—almost-simultaneously released reusable alternatives that promise to replace disposable Smartwater bottles. Though there have been plenty of reusable water bottles made for hiking out there and there have been for decades, a bottle modeled specifically after Smartwater had yet to be developed. The timing is uncanny, but it seems a perfect convergence of supply chains, hiker demand, and environmental consciousness emerged to finally fill a gap in the outdoor market.
