4 Surprising Drinkware Facts You May Not Know

Water is the most abundant substance on earth and one of the most important pieces of our survival. Everybody already knows that—you drink your water, coffee or soda every day, and probably from your favorite piece of drinkware.

There’s a lot more to drinkware than just something to hold your daily caffeine injection. At Debco, we have more than 30 years of information—literally millions of lines of actual sales data, trends and research—on drinkware sales that we use to help distributors find the perfect products for their clients, but we’ve also learned some interesting facts about the mugs and bottles we use every day. Here are four of the more surprising things we’ve found out about drinkware.

1. Drinkware Is an Exercise Accessory
Surveys show that 50 percent or more of employers offer some type of health and wellness programs. Among large employers, 60 to 80 percent utilize wellness programs. Nike, HBO, Forbes, Google, MTV and IBM all support workplace yoga programs. Why? A Conference Board study has shown that for every $1 invested in workplace health and wellness, an organization can expect to return $3 in cost savings, when measured in worker productivity and reduced absenteeism due to illness. Drinkware promotes hydration, which is an important part of fitness—that’s why every gym has branded water bottles. Businesses can improve employee health and their bottom lines by giving out branded drinkware to employees as part of bigger fitness programs.

2. People See Their Drinkware More Than Their Families
Well, not really, but it’s close. Your bank teller has an acrylic tumbler at the terminal he sits at for eight hours a day, five days a week. Your insurance agent drinks an average of three cups of coffee a day from her favorite mug. The CEO of a brokerage house drives to work an average of 260 days a year with her trusted coffee tumbler. Whether it’s used in the home, in transit or at the office, the simple fact is that promotional drinkware is everywhere and has the ability to advertise your client's brand in multiple settings, at all times and throughout all phases of the day.

3. Drinkware Goes Back to School
There are more than 2,700 universities and colleges in North America with more than 22.3 million students enrolled at those institutions. When you add high schools, grade schools and sporting leagues to the equation, the numbers are staggering. Oh, and don’t forget that each of those schools and sport teams has a fan base and alumni. Those fan bases generally extend far beyond the field, the campus and, often, the state or region. This makes the education market one of the biggest audiences ever, and makes schools one of the most prime targets for promotional branding. The perfect drinkware piece means they’ll be showing their team colors every day.

4. We Waste Billions in Disposable Cups Every Year
North Americans throw away an astonishing average of more than 25 billion paper cups every single year. For every four paper cups manufactured, there is the equivalent of one pound of carbon dioxide emissions. To create a single paper cup, it takes 43 grams of wood, 4.1 grams of petroleum and 1.8 grams of chemicals. A person saving a single paper cup a day for 40 years will save 24 trees. Multiply that by the number of members in your associations, and the numbers become staggering. Private companies that want to maintain being socially responsible can replace every employees' paper cups with reusable promotional drinkware, and begin to change the world.

Those four facts are just the tip of the iceberg. There is amazing data on drinkware usage for every market, industry and demographic. Learning those secrets might be just the thing to help you land the next big campaign.