We’re Metal – They’re Plastic.
We aren’t referring to our taste in music. Or calling other shower head makers insincere.
It’s all about materials! High Sierra’s shower heads are nearly all-metal. Their core parts are made of solid brass and stainless steel. Tips and other decorative parts? Also metal, made from heavy-duty zinc or aluminum. Their non-metal parts? They’re made of the highest quality silicone rubber. That’s a non-reactive material widely used in the medical and food industries.
Nearly all other affordably-priced shower heads today are made almost entirely of plastic. And don’t be fooled: many shower heads that “look metal” are still made of plastic, with just an ultra-thin coat of metal plating.
Three Reasons Your Next Shower Head Should be All-Metal
1. They’re durable and built to last
Metal shower heads like High Sierra’s are highly durable. Because you typically won’t replace them nearly as often, they use fewer resources. That’s a big sustainability win.
Plastic shower heads are more breakable. When a shower head made of plastic has a chip or crack due to impact, it often needs to be replaced. Plastics also break down due to wear, temperature fluctuations, and naturally occurring minerals found in the water supply.
Each time a broken plastic shower head is thrown away, it adds waste to landfills – or elsewhere in the environment. Also, each time you have to get a new shower head, that’s a negative for your wallet and for sustainability. That’s yet more energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from the new shower head’s manufacture, transport, and packaging.
2. They’re far more recyclable
The metals in High Sierra’s shower heads are highly valued. And extensively recycled. For example, steel is the most recycled material on the planet, with an overall recycling rate of 86% in 2014. Recycling metals like steel and brass (a copper and zinc alloy) saves energy, compared with mining and refining pure metals. And these recycled metals perform equally as well as new materials. That makes metal products far more sustainable.
In contrast, the plastic in other shower heads, made from fossil fuel-derived chemicals, is cheap, bulky, and unwanted. Only 9% of plastic gets recycled. And unless its sources are pure, each new generation typically degrades in performance. There are many different types of plastic. Sometimes, a batch of recycled plastic containing a mix of types can contaminate that batch. In other instances, reinforcements, fillers, and colorants mixed into some plastic products in a batch will do the same.
Typically products made from plastics are discarded. Some of that discarded waste ends up in landfills, especially here in the USA. And a smaller amount is incinerated, which generates its own pollution. Yet globally, a vast amount of it continues to accumulate in our planet’s ecosystem.
Today, global plastic waste totals approximately 381 million tons per year. The USA, along with nations like India and China, are among the largest polluters, but it’s a truly global problem. In particular, our shared oceans are at risk. Some 8.8 million tons of additional plastic ended up in the world’s oceans in just a single year, 2010. That’s equivalent to pushing five plastic grocery bags of plastic trash directly into our oceans from every single foot of coastline around the world.
3. They’re healthier for people and the environment
Both metals and plastics impact the environment when extracting raw materials, and when producing, transporting, and using them. Arguably, however, plastics are much worse from a sustainability standpoint. That’s partly because such a vast share of plastics ends up as waste. And also because metals like steel and brass are relatively durable and inert. In contrast, plastics are more likely to fracture into smaller pieces, be wind-blown and water-carried, and pervade our environment.
A 2017 United Nations conference fact sheet estimated plastic waste in and around Earth’s oceans kills up to 1 million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals each year, along with deaths to marine turtles and countless fish.
And we humans are not immune from this impact: we’re increasingly ingesting plastic-related chemicals. Some chemical compounds and additives found in plastic products, including certain “endocrine disruptors,” take a toll on human health and development.
Bottom line: When choosing a shower head, consider the materials used to make it!
