On July 16, 2025, I read a July 16, 2025 op-ed in The Washington Times by Rick Berman (president of RBB Strategies) titled The boxed water hoax: When green marketing turns toxic. I suspect that a many people who came across the op-ed may have done a double-take, wondering who in the world thought that putting water in boxes was a worthwhile endeavor. I suspect this in part because had I not happened to be passing through Grand Army Plaza en route to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park in the late morning of August 12, 2023, I would have been the person wondering what boxed water was. But due to my good fortune or misfortune, I immediately thought “BOXED WATER IS BETTER” upon seeing the headline. Allow me to share my story as I present photos of the boxed water in question, which I took just over two years to the day I am writing this.
I was walking to Prospect Park with family. I recall that it was warm that day, but not oppressively hot. We passed through Grand Army Plaza on the way to the park. I do not recall the precise details, but there were at least two people with boxes full of smaller boxes. They were handing stuff out. I did not know what they were handing out. We were prepared to move on until we realized that they were handing out water – albeit unusually packaged water.
I do not recall these people having made much of a marketing pitch. The marketing strategy appeared to be to hand boxes of water to everyone and hope that people (1) enjoyed the water and (2) read the boxes. As you will see, BOXED WATER IS BETTER boxes were verbose.
I had not been thirsty at the time, but I drank my boxed water later at home. I recall that the water tasted like good, very filtered water. It tasted fresh enough for all normal water-drinking purposes despite having apparently been “boxed” on March 10, 2023, five months before I took my first sip.
I will confess to not being a water connoisseur. Years ago I went to Fleet Week with a friend and we went on a guided tour of the USS Wasp. My friend was blown away by the quality of the water on the ship and asked the sailor who was giving us a tour if she knew why the water was so good. She did not. I did not try the water, but I took his word for it being the best water he had ever had. But I digress.
After I drank the water, I photographed every side of the box with an eye toward turning the boxed water thing into an article. My original plan was to try the box, which is reusable and refillable, for a few weeks and report back on how it held up. Unfortunately, the plan fell by the wayside – perhaps because the idea of washing a box of water seemed unduly daunting when I have a water filter pitcher and more nice cups than I can use. (I will also note that I did not publish prolifically in July and August of 2023, so perhaps I had been too busy to investigate the water box.)
I eventually forgot about the box of water and my collection of BOXED WATER IS BETTER photographs. It was only when I saw The Washington Times op-ed, which I believe I came across thanks to the RealClearInvestigations RSS feed, that I remembered I had the old boxed water photos somewhere. This was one phone and a few operating system re-installs ago, but I knew I had the photos because going back to 2021, I have used Syncthing to keep my phone’s camera folder in sync with my computer, and I have my old phone synced folders in a legacy photos directory on my devices. It took a bit of digging, but I eventually found my collection of boxed water photos. They came out well enough, all things considered (which is good since I no longer have the box).
While reading the box, I remembered another thing I wanted to do in my then-aborted, now-realized, BOXED WATER IS BETTER article. One of the sides of the box reads as follows:
YOU POST. WE PLANT. Post an image of this carton with #betterplanet and we’ll plant 2 trees in a National Forest with the NFF. 1,400,000 trees already planted.
BOXED WATER IS BETTER box
I instantly remembered why I had made a note of this language at the time. The box instructs me to “[p]ost an image of this carton” but it did not say where to post the image. I am sure some of my social media-addled friends out there will assume the box was sending them to a big tech proprietary social media platform such as Instagram, Facebook, X, or the two-syllable one that should be banned. But while I try to read the fine print, I do not write the fine print. I like to think that this box supports my digital home concept and will now proceed under that assumption.
Astute readers should note that I added the “hashtag” to the caption for the relevant image above. I believe I just caused two trees to be planted in a National Forest with the NFF. Thank you for your attention to this planetary matter.
(Aside: According to the official BOXED WATER IS BETTER website, they have now planted 1.5 million trees. That is cool. I like trees.)
Returning to the op-ed which had reminded me to publish my long-pending boxed water article: Is Mr. Berman correct that BOXED WATER IS BETTER was a big hoax? Let us review his evidence.
These boxes are not simply made of paper. They are constructed from paperboard fused with a thin layer of aluminum to prevent leakage. That thin aluminum layer is the problem, and the lie.
Rick Berman
While I did not photograph the interior of the water box, I recall that the interitor had a metallic silver color. However, I did not look into the matter too deeply, so I can neither affirm nor deny assertions about the inside of the water box.
I will paraphrase his other main points:
- Recycling the boxes is impractical, if not impossible, because the aluminum has to be separated from the paper, and there will never be enough boxed water boxes to make that worthwhile.
- The plastic used in water bottles is more readily recyclable than the water boxes.
- When defending itself in a class action lawsuit for misleading consumers, the BOXED WATER IS BETTER people turned to the Better Business Bureau instead of independent scientists.
- “Aluminum is a known neurotoxin.”
(Note: See the Better Business Bureau’s recap of the disposition of the suit, which had been brought by the International Bottled Water Assocation. You can also read a recap from by lawyers Bryan Wolin and Jonathan Bronstein of at JD Supra and a recap from earlier in the proceedings.)
I am not a recycling expert, but Mr. Berman’s critique of the recyclability of the boxes sounds plausible to me, assuming arguendo that his presentation of the underlying facts is correct. Assuming he is correct about the impracticality of recycling the boxes, it would seem to hardly matter whether the on-box bragging that the boxes are made of 92% recycled materials is true. If they would not be recycled in practice, they are a proverbial bowling ball in the recycling bin. I will note that I am skeptical about his health-related aluminum concerns in the boxed water context (however, one could argue that the reason why I forgot about this article for two years was aluminum poisoning).
In the end, I will leave it to others to decide whether BOXED WATER IS BETTER is a big hoax, the real deal, or, like many consumer products, somewhere in between the extremes. I note that Mr. Berman presents only one side of the story, and those who are interested in the other side can read the BOXED WATER website for the company’s position on why boxed water is better that the drink-packaging competition and why boxed water is more recyclable (along with the links about the case posted earlier).
While the water tasted fine and I appreciate that it gave me a story and article topic for the low price of free, one reason this whole article project fell by the wayside for a couple of years is because I am not moved by new ways of packaging water (note that there are apparently water boxing rivals). I see people walking around Brooklyn with giant thermoses and metal bottles as if they are preparing to deploy to Saudi Arabia for Desert Storm 2.0. Most of the United States has good tap water (this is especially true in my home New York City), and there are many solid water filter pitchers and filters on the market. I dare say the eco-friendly water thing is a largely solved matter in the water container department. For those who would prefer disposable non-plastic water containers, I am sure there are some more recyclable (or at least comparatively recyclable) paper cups out there. I will continue taking a more economic approach to my water consumption (I will reserve my drink spending for coffee, tea, flavored seltzers, and the occasional soda or Snapple).
(For those of you looking for a review, I note again that the boxed water was good, very purified water, although I would not have thought too deeply about it had it not been in a box and handed to me for free. I do not have any opinion on flavored boxed water since I only learned about that while conducting research for this article.)
But allow me to conclude with an unambiguously positive note: BOXED WATER IS BETTER has the best form-factor.
