Mason jars. I know you’ve seen them used as cups at parties, in dorm rooms and in campus kitchens. Or perhaps you’ve seen them starring in your Instagram feed. They’ve become a ubiquitous accessory for anyone trying to buck the mainstream. There is much less of a chance you’ve seen them where they belong: at a home canning store, in the basement of an older relative’s home or possibly in a museum.
According to a Washington Post article, Mason jars became trendy in 2011, as evidenced by a massive spike in Google searches for “Mason jar.” In fact, Ball — one of the main producers of the receptacle — reported this year that as a result of the dramatic increase in sales, “in the past year alone, enough Ball brand canning jars were produced to encircle more than 90 percent of the planet Earth.”
That is a lot of jars, but let’s be clear: Drinking from jars makes considerably less sense than drinking from bottles, cups, glasses, goblets or mugs. It’s like eating peas with a fork — you can do it, but don’t pretend it’s better than using a spoon.
The Mason jar was created by John Landis Mason in 1858 for the purpose of home canning. If you fill the jars with hot foods or liquids and screw on the two-part cap, the lid forms an airtight seal as the food cools. The invention helped popularize home canning across the United States as an easy way to preserve fruits and vegetables for consumption during the winter. The jars also underwent a surge in popularity during World War II when the government encouraged families to grow more of their own food and preserve it at home.
But while the resurgence of Mason jars has nothing to do with their originally intended use, the trend has garnered enough attention that it’s been written about in media outlets including the New York Times, the Onion and BuzzFeed. There are whole Pinterest boards dedicated to the humble vessel. Jennifer Condon, the wedding style director at Brides Magazine, told the Washington Post that this year “probably 75 percent of weddings ended up with Mason jars.”
You can now buy sippy-cup lids for the jars and lids made to fit straws and pitchers modeled after the classic jar shape. In fact, you can even customize your jar to the point where it has little in common with the original Mason jar except that it’s made of glass and feels vaguely old-timey. But those aesthetics are huge, right? You wouldn’t dare be mistaken for the kind of person who drinks out of a Poland Spring or Nestle Pure Life bottle or, God forbid, a travel mug.
The crux of the issue seems to be the aesthetics. People who drink from jars want their beverage containers to define them and to broadcast their lifestyle choices to everyone who has a chance to watch them sip casually from their chalice of cool.
I would also add that people who drink from jars have the sense that they are being environmentally friendly by using them instead of a regular bottle. All those unenlightened students with plastic water bottles are ruining the planet and contributing to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, while your use of glass is saving the world one sip at a time, right? Wrong. I say “sense” because according to Postconsumers.com, though there is a large variance in the amount of time it takes disposable plastic bottles to biodegrade depending on the type of plastic used, the average amount of time it takes is between 400 and 500 years. But shockingly, glass jars could take over one million years to biodegrade. That means glass takes about 2,000 times longer to break down than plastic — not a good reason to pick the jars. Oh, but you’re going to reuse the jar? I can reuse my bottle, too.
I have also heard concerns that plastic bottles can leach harmful chemicals into the liquids they are carrying. While this seems true in theory, almost all disposable plastic bottles are made with a plastic called polyethylene terephthalate, which has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as safe for single and repeated use, even though an email hoax in 2003 asserted contrary ideas. So there is no conclusive evidence that your Mason jar is any safer than my plastic bottle. You’re better off worrying about your strategy for cleaning broken glass off the carpet in Smitty-B.
Let’s be honest with ourselves: Mason jars are no safer, more environmentally friendly or more convenient than plastic bottles. Also, they aren’t any cheaper than reusing a bottle of water you already bought — unless all you hipsters are actually using jars from your grandma’s house and not buying them at Target or Wal-Mart. I’ve even heard of people who thought Mason jars had become too mainstream and instead opted for reusing salsa jars — but unfortunately, they couldn’t get the taste out.
Mason jars are about aesthetics. You want to look like you’re thrifty and clever, but I just want to ask you for your strawberry jam recipe. And hipsters, if you need just a little bit of a bigger push to lose the jars, Seven-Eleven now offers slurpees in Mason jars.
Walker Mills ’15 thinks you should put your money where your mouth is and put some pickles or preserves in your jar. You can contact him at walker_mills@brown.edu.
ADVERTISEMENT
