Here's What You Can Do With Your Old SodaStream Cylinders

For soda and sparkling water lovers across the globe, the invention of the SodaStream is the next best thing since sliced bread. According to a 2018 Motley Fool article, SodaStream has been around since 1903 and was birthed by a gin distiller out of London who found a way to "fizz up" beverages. The whole concept of making carbonated beverages in your own home really took off in the 1970s. Fast-forward to the present day and one in every four homes in Sweden has one of these gadgets while the United States made up 32 percent of new sales for the PepsiCo-owned company.

If you are not familiar with how the SodaStream works, you may become a believer and decide you need one once you do. It's a fairly simple and straight forward process. Per the SodaStream website, all you need is regular old, cold tap water. Fill up the SodaStream BPA-free reusable bottle and place it into your sparkling water maker. Your machine comes equipped with a CO2 cylinder ready for action. Once you have your water in place, just press the carbonating button, and voila, you have carbonated water ready for whatever added flavor your taste buds desire. But what happens when you run out of CO2?

First, SodaStream already gets props for being environmentally friendly in that it helps to cut down on how much packaging needs to be disposed of since you may end up buying fewer single cans and bottles of water, seltzer water, or soda. This is a big deal, especially when you consider that, according to a 2015 CreditDonkey blog post, in a single year, Americans buy 42.6 billion individual 1-liter bottles of water. You can also recycle your CO2 cylinders, which further helps in reducing our environmental footprint. 

Per Waste Dive, ways to recycle or refill the CO2 cylinders you need to make the fizz are starting to become more prevalent. Third-party vendors have found a market for refilling the cylinders while vending machines are also popping up for exchanging these cylinders at retailers. And according to SodaStream's site, you just need to bring your empty CO2 cylinder(s) to one of their local retailers. And if you are returning but not getting a new cylinder, you get $1 per cylinder. They also note that if you are not given this $1 per return, just ask for a receipt that shows how many you gave back and then mail it to their office in NJ where SodaStream will send you a check for the appropriate amount.