Cans, bottles, or a dispenser: which is the sustainable choice for your office?

Canned water looks like the green upgrade, but its whole case rests on every can being recycled, every time, and no office can promise that. Here's how cans, bottles and dispensers really compare, and why one Amsterdam office pulled out 100 cans a week and never looked back.

If you're building the sustainability case for your office's water, here's the answer nobody in the can business wants to give: the most sustainable drink is the one that never needed packaging in the first place.

Canned water looks like the green upgrade. But its environmental case depends on every can being recycled, every time. No office can promise that. A dispenser removes the packaging altogether. And there's a real office that made the switch and never looked back.

This is for the office and facility managers who have to defend the choice, not just make it, usually right when a contract's up for renewal or a sustainability target lands on the desk. Here's how the three options compare, why we land where we do, and what a switch would remove from your office.

What "sustainable" should mean

Most comparisons score packaging on whether it can be recycled. But recyclability is a promise. In fact, many offices' recycling systems are heavily flawed, which is why avoiding waste in the first place is much easier. A can that ends up in the general bin is exactly as single-use as a bottle, whatever the label claims.

So judge every option by one yardstick: waste avoided per drink.

Bottled water: the option you've already ruled out

Bottled water is the easy strawman. Single-use plastic, delivered, stored and hauled away, with a cost that climbs on every invoice. Most offices building a sustainability case have already moved past it. If your question is really about money, the ROI case against bottled water is a separate story , and a strong one. Here we're focused on what happens after you've ruled bottles out and someone suggests cans.

Canned drinks: The reality

Cans are marketed as the clean swap. Aluminium is "infinitely recyclable," and that's true. Recycling a can uses about 95% less energy than making a new one. But read that again: the saving only exists if the can is recycled. Making aluminium from scratch is one of the most energy-intensive processes in packaging (around 186 GJ per metric ton of primary metal). A can only earns its green reputation on its second life. Miss that, and you've paid the full environmental price for a single drink.

In an office, you can't guarantee that second life. Cans land in the wrong bin. And deposit-return, the system meant to fix this, adds friction that falls on your team. STARP, an Amsterdam firm that ran canned water before switching, put it plainly: someone had to keep bringing the empties "back to where they came from."

To be clear, this isn't about cans being worse than bottles on carbon. On the best available evidence they're broadly comparable. The point is narrower: a can is still single-use, and its green case rests on a recycling loop the office doesn't always control.

The dispenser: the only genuinely waste-free option

A dispenser or water cooler is the only option that never asks "how do we recycle this?" There's nothing to recycle. No primary production, no packaging, no recycling dependency. For water coolers you get your plain filtered water. Dispensers pour plain and sometimes sparkling. And with smart dispensers, you get filtered, still and sparkling, plain and flavoured, on demand, all poured directly into a glass or a reusable bottle. The waste avoided speaks for itself.

Proof: how it played out at STARP

STARP didn't switch on theory. They were getting through around 100 cans a week, plus the deposit-return runs that came with them. They replaced the lot with a REFILL+ for filtered still and sparkling water, on tap.

100 cans a week, gone. The deposit-return chore, gone. And the part that matters most: it stuck. The team adopted it, the habit formed, and sparkling on tap became the office favourite. They'd even looked at carbonation setups like SodaStream first and rejected it, everyone would have needed their own compatible bottle. The dispenser just works, for everyone, with nothing to carry back.

It's not a one-off, either. Across Aquablu installs the numbers scale. Schiphol has avoided more than 1.5 million bottles, and Sheraton Brussels Airport over 40,000 in a single year. STARP is the office-sized version of the same story.

→ Calculate what a switch would remove from your office 

The comparison

The obvious objections

"Aren't cans recyclable enough?" Recyclable isn't recycled. Even good recycling rates leave a gap, and elimination beats a rate every time.

"Isn't switching a hassle?" One install, then less to manage than before: no deliveries, no deposit-return. STARP's switch stuck without a fuss.

"How disruptive is the install?" One visit, plumbed into your existing supply. No structural work, no downtime for the team, you go from cases-in-the-cupboard to water-on-tap in a single fit.

"What will it actually cost?" A dispenser is a fixed cost you control, not a delivery invoice that climbs with every case. Most offices find it lands below what they were already spending on cans or bottles once delivery and storage are counted. Run the numbers for your office with our ROI calculator.

"Is tap water good enough?" It's filtered on site, still or sparkling. This isn't the tap. It's better than the can.

"What about sparkling?" Built in. It's STARP's favorite water style.

What this means for your office

A dispenser is the only option here with no packaging to recycle, no deposit-return to run, and no waste to defend. Cans and bottles both leave you managing single-use packaging and trusting it ends up in the right place. For an office building a sustainability case, the dispenser is the one that holds up and, on the numbers, usually the one that costs less to run.

→ Calculate what a switch would remove from your office 

→ Explore hydration solutions for sustainable offices