Design for an invertible water bottle to facilitate cleaning and promote sustainable water bottle usage

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to explore the design of a reusable water bottle that can be inverted to expose the inside. Being able to directly touch the entire inside of the product could facilitate cleaning and consequently promote sustainable water bottle usage. Existing cleaning solutions and various water bottles were evaluated for benchmarking, and a water bottle usage survey revealed that most respondents clean their reusable bottles on a weekly to monthly basis, with 35.5% of respondents indicating that they had thrown out a bottle since it was clean. Observing volunteers in water bottle cleanliness perception test revealed that being able to physically contact and see the inside of the bottle while cleaning were most important. Two iterations of sketch models were created, demonstrating that a pouch-like design with a drawstring attached between the inside of the pouch and the water bottle top to aid invertibility was the most feasible solution. The final water bottle design, created as a CAD model, consists of three components: a top, a bottom, and an invertible pouch made of a soft plastic. The invertible pouch is held in place and made watertight between the bottom and top components that resemble a standard reusable water bottle design.