During his sophomore year at Phoenix Country Day School, Reid Umar’s Gatorade squeeze bottle fell off his desk during a free period.
Instead of simply picking it up, the broken bottle revealed mold and buildup trapped inside the plastic nozzle that he realized he could never fully clean.
As a hockey player, Umar had relied on squeeze bottles for years, but he had long noticed their shortcomings. Plastic bottles failed to keep water cold, could leach microplastics into drinks and often couldn’t be cleaned thoroughly, he said.
