Illustration: Henk van Ruitenbeek You don’t really notice it at first, but drinking water from a Dopper bottle is a real trend in The Netherlands. Once you’ve spotted the first few colourful bottles in people’s backpacks, you will start to realise that they are all around you.
At a lecture at the beginning of Period 1 last year, I noticed that there were many colourful bottles with the same design on my fellow students’ desks. At first I thought this kind of bottle may have been a freebie students got during the AID. But I found out I was wrong when I started to travel around the Netherlands. In Utrecht, Amsterdam and other cities, I would always see such bottles in people’s backpacks. I realized that this was a popular water bottle all over this country.
Drinking tap water from their own bottles is a sustainable solution for the Dutch
At first glance, I didn’t really like the style of the Dopper bottle, although the design was impressive. But as time went by, I began to love Dopper bottles and even got one myself! My Dutch friends told me that Dutch people do not like to spend money on a good brand of mineral water but tend to drink tap water from their own bottles. After all, tap water is drinkable and free in the Netherlands. Dopper bottles are just a sustainable and environmentally friendly solution for them. And for me too now!
Zihao Wang, an MSc student of Food Safety, from China
Do you have a nice anecdote about your experience going Dutch? Send it in! Describ an encounter with Dutch culture in detail and comment on it briefly. 300 words max. Send it to resource@wur.nl and earn twenty-five euros and Dutch candy.