If you’ve held on to your stash of old Stanley tumblers only because you couldn’t figure out how to responsibly toss’em or recycle them, the brand that makes them is now willing to take them back.
PMI WW Brands, maker of Stanley 1913 drinkware, on Wednesday announced its first-ever take-back recycling program (up to four eligible items annually per person) for its line of steel and stainless steel products.
“We’re empowering our community to ensure their well-loved products never become waste, making it easier for products to start their next chapter,” Graham Nearn, chief product and sustainability officer with PMI WW Brands, said in a statement.
To send back a previously-owned Stanley, consumers need to log their products at stanley1913.com, generate a prepaid shipping label or QR code, and return eligible items at no cost. The items are then sent to a US-based recycling partner to be disassembled, sorted, and recycled.
The company said those who avail of the program (available in the contiguous US) will receive a $5 discount to be used toward a purchases of a new product on www.stanley1913.com. For each eligible returned item, the company said it will also donate $5 to Ocean Conservancy, a global NGO focused on marine conservation.
Emily Cichy, vice president of sustainability & social impact with Stanley 1913, said the brand has been working toward “maximizing the amount of recycled content in the products that we create, specifically the stainless steel but we’re also looking at the other materials.”
“Last year, 65% of the materials in our Stanley products were actually recycled content, meaning they had a previous life,” she said in an interview with Bagable.com. “So the next natural step is then to think can we be part of creating the next life of these products.”
“This is a first-of-its-kind effort at Stanley,” she said. “We’re approaching this as a test and learn and this is a step in our sustainability journey that will continue to accelerate into the future.”
The 112-year-old Seattle-based company, established in 1913 by inventor William Stanley, Jr. who created an all-steel vacuum-insulated bottle that kept food and beverages hot or cold, became a must-have accessory for camping and hiking enthusiasts.
Over time, the vacuum bottle’s usage evolved as users found the Stanley bottle to be convenient in other situations, such as the workplace and on road trips.
Then, Gen Z caught up with the brand and went nuts, giving its products a massive resurgence with younger tween, teen and young adult consumers who made the super-sized Stanley Quencher 40-ounce tumbler (priced at $45) a viral must-have item.
Millennial moms, too, joined the Stanley bottle fandom and shared hundreds of TikTok videos in which they marveled at how the tapered bottom of the jumbo tumblers perfectly fit into a car’s cup holder despite its big size, making it an indispensable accessory to hold water or coffee for morning school drop-offs.
At the peak of this newfound popularity, the brand couldn’t make enough of its tumblers. Every new product launch and limited-time collaboration with popular retailers, celebrities and athletes, would ignite a frenzy, triggering stampedes in stores and website crashes.
More recently, the hype has calmed down amid some setbacks for the brand, including some concern about the use of lead in the base of its products and younger fans moving on to the next water bottle obsession.
That's really cool - good on Stanley. I have SO many of their water bottles that I've been gifted over the years but I held onto them all for some reason. This will be very helpful to getting some pantry space back!