Colors of Water Bottle Caps Have Hidden Meanings? | Snopes.com

Oct 17, 2024

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Everyone knows it's important to stay hydrated. If you're working toward that goal by drinking water out of plastic bottles, this rumor may interest you: Viral posts claim the bottles' caps are color coded to tell you how your water was produced.

Snopes found examples of the claim on Instagram in early 2024, but as far as we could tell, the claim originated on TikTok sometime before 2024. These social media posts claim white caps signify the water was "processed" — although it's unclear exactly what "processed" water means. Meanwhile, green caps supposedly mean the water is flavored; blue caps allegedly signify spring water (the water is bottled not long after it naturally comes out of the ground), and black caps purportedly indicate alkaline water.

Stop buying water until you know this secret: Every water color cap has a different meaning. Black is for alkaline water, blue is from spring, white is for processed and green is usually flavored spring water."

The claim, however, is not true.

In the United States, two agencies regulate bottled water: the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency. However, based on Snopes' analysis of FDA and EPA guidelines, neither organization has any rules or regulations regarding color-coded caps.

Some brands use caps that match the alleged "rules," like the black caps on Essentia Alkaline Water. But many brands break the purported coding system's rules. Fiji Water, which exclusively uses a blue cap, doesn't come from a spring. Meanwhile, Crystal Geyser's water does come from a spring but generally uses white caps. And the TikTok guidelines definitely don't account for Aquafina bottles with different-colored caps.

Furthermore, the system proposed by the viral social media posts doesn't account for flip-top or "sport caps," which often have different colors from standard twist-off bottles. The rumor also does not consider canned water, produced by companies such as Liquid Death.

In other words, bottled water manufacturers in the U.S. decide how to design their caps — including their colors — and those decisions are independent from one another.

That said, some companies have set up color-coding systems to note differences in their own products.

For example, San Benedetto, a bottled water company based in Italy, gives its sparkling water a blue cap and still water a red cap. And in Italy, where asking for water at a restaurant will likely inspire a follow-up question — "sparkling or still?" — the color coding is clever design; the caps might tip off a still-water drinker before they get a mouthful of fizzy water, and vice versa.

We stopped by a few grocery stores in the Chicago area to do an informal survey of water bottle caps. While we found several "violators," — Kroger-branded flavored water with a white top, for instance — there was enough of a pattern that we could see why people believed the claim.

In particular, we found black caps were a good indicator of alkaline water, as suggested by the posts, but not all alkaline water bottles had black caps. Green caps were almost nonexistent (except for Dasani), despite the presence of flavored water. Blue caps were just as likely to be spring water as they were sport caps (and Aquafina was neither, but still had a blue cap). Most water bottles we saw had white caps, regardless of the source or type of water.

In sum, caps that follow the purported meanings appear to be coincidences — not evidence of a widespread system practiced by all bottled water companies.