We've Been Opening Water Bottle Packages Wrong This Entire Time
You only need to scroll through the 2000-plus comments on the viral TikTok water bottle case-opening hack posted by user Keva Chang to know the frustrating world it's now freed us from. "So u mean I don't need to punch a hole thru the plastic w my finger [sic]" says one popular comment. "So ive been fighting for my life getting first few bottles for nothin [sic]" says another. While some commenters note the grave dangers of plastic bottles and others counter by mentioning the water-insecure communities that may need bottled water, there's no debating the ingenuity in the video. Like many of the best hacks, it's simple, surprising, and takes an everyday time suck and cuts it in half. Literally.
@kevaweeva He actually loved this and now we just grab and go💧🏃🏽 #lifehack #dadsoftiktok #waterbottle #homeimprovement #easyhack #foryou #fyp #unconsciousstandardpractice #watercase #kirkland #lifehackvideo #kitchenhack
This hack wasn't invented by Chang, but her video brought it to a huge audience. It's easy: Place the shrink-wrapped water bottles on the floor, grab a sharp knife, split the case at its midpoint, and then open it like the cross-section of a delicious sandwich. In the video, Chang's dad slides the now open-faced case to the corner of a room for easy access before flashing a thumbs up, but this hack is also great for large parties, kids' sports games, and any occasion where the last thing you want is an obnoxious fight with a piece of stubborn plastic just for a bottle of water.
Why water bottles are packaged like that
We love this hack, but why are water bottle cases shrink-wrapped in the first place? The process itself is no different than shrink-wrapping anything else: wrap in plastic, heat, shrink, and repeat. For big-brand water bottles like Kirkland and Poland Spring, that's done on a production line, where the bottled water is covered in a thin layer of plastic polymer and put through a heating and cooling cycle that wraps the case tight before shipping it out.
But why use shrink-wrap, when soda can cases are often packaged in cardboard, which is not only biodegradable but much, much easier to open? Plastic water bottles used to be packaged in cardboard cases, but manufacturers switched to shrink-wrap as a way to reduce packaging volume and attempt to make their products more sustainable. The shrink-wrap is also an opportunity to stand out on store shelves; companies use the shrink-wrap as a plastic canvas on which to magnify their branding with larger logos, setting themselves apart in a sea of competing bottled waters.
While the shrink-wrap is great for manufacturers, it's difficult to remove as a consumer, which is why this hack is great. And unlike so many other TikTok hacks that crowd our feeds, this one's not annoying. I'd even go so far as to proclaim it as the correct way to defeat shrink-wrap and do what I'm guessing we'll all need to this summer: drink as much water as possible.