Is there a sparkling water shortage everywhere or just by me?

[costerica]

Been to 6 supermarkets this week. Not a single bottle of sparkling water anywhere. Even the stuff that £4/litre.

It’s the one pregnancy craving that’s stuck with me and I neeeeeed it

Mmm- I normally buy a six pack of 1litre bottles of sparkling to mix with white wine. Get deliveries from Ocado and I'd say the last 3 times the cheap stuff has been subbed for San Pelligrino at £8.00 for 6- strangely that is always in stock! I think it's time to check out a Soda Stream.

Get a soda stream.

That's so much unnecessary pollution, not just the plastic but the water and energy used to manufacture that plastic and then the carbon emissions from transporting the product to you.

Plus you'll never run out!

Yes! On the verge of ordering a soda stream because me and dh drink about 10l a week and just can't get any from tesco or lidl

Also don't the bottles you're storing clutter up your kitchen? You presumably buy more than one or two at a time if you're drinking that much. That's the same amount of space as a soda stream in the pantry.

It’s because of the people who chose brexit, now there’s not enough lorry drivers, so supplies have to be prioritised. Juice and fizzy water is heavy, bulky, and not profitable, as PP have said. Ah well. At least they’re ‘sovereign’..or something.

Struggling to get it in the north east

No shortage here in North Yorkshire

@costerica If you do get a Soda Stream, get an electric one! The manual ones just don't cut it. The electric ones are perfect every time

@Accidentgirlfriend

Do people actually drink this stuff 😂

Yes it's amazing when you're super dehydrated. I also add a tiny drop of cordial to it.

No fizzy drinks near us. I went to two supermarkets for some Fanta. None to be had.

@LadyCatStark

I don’t drink it but I’ve heard there is and Diet Coke too!

My still bottled water got substituted with fizzy 🤮.

McDonald's have run out of Diet Coke, I had to have Coke Zero

I've had problems getting Evian for ds & Schweppes Soda water for me, ds drinks 2 x 1.5 litre bottles most days & I drink a litre of soda water every day, neither of us drink tea & coffee at home so our water is the bulk of what we drink. Have you tried Fresh on Amazon? I have managed to get our water from there when none of the supermarkets had any.

Sodastream here also. I use it a lot for sparkling water and then use the little squirt bottles of flavours. Having an iced tea right now.

Yes, definitely a shortage of the cheaper stuff in Sainsburys - cynically I'm wondering why the most expensive sparkling water always seems to be in stock though !
One day I went in there was literally 10 shelves full of Pellegrino !!

Bottled water shortage in general here, especially the flavoured water. (Retail worker, it’s been 4-5 weeks now)

Agree it’s definitely worth trying local independent shops, we’ve been able to keep a reasonable stock due to using a range of suppliers. Sparkling water ironically hasn’t been a problem!

famous last words as nothing arrives tomorrow

Same in South Wales. Seems to have been building up for a while now though... I've often had problems finding 2l bottles of it in the last few months.
I was lucky with my shop yesterday though, 5 bottles of Highland Spring!

[quote Boredmotherofone]@costerica If you do get a Soda Stream, get an electric one! The manual ones just don't cut it. The electric ones are perfect every time [/quote]
In what way don't they cut it?

I have a manual one. Does the job great.

Soda stream owners - I don't understand how they work. Are you restricted to the soda stream brand syrups as your flavour choices? I don't understand how this would help replace my diet coke plastic bottle usage, if it doesn't taste the same.

Have you tried B and M bargains or Home bargains

This popped up as an advert after commenting on this!

Aldi had soda stream on offer recently and I can report it is great, no more plastic bottles, quite a small appliance and tastes good.

We drink so much sparkling water but felt awful about the amount of plastic we were getting through, so we bought a Soda Stream. If you give it enough pumps it ends up much fizzier than the shop-bought stuff!

Soda streem
All the way!

You can make it as fizzy as you want
You can get the glass bottle one and help the planet as a bonus

We don’t drink anything else now, it goes in kids school bottles too (they have to promise to take a lot of care opening the lid!)

There's an international CO2 shortage. There was a piece in the Grocer about it and the problems it was causing for the meat packing industry. IIRC CO2 is a by product of something that had greatly reduced output due to Covid and then further problems. I have a friend at Tesco who checked. Basically it goes into stuff that is duty rated (beer, sparkling wine) and VAT rated and only then will they use it on spring water. Their supplier apparently wasn't supplying.

I switched to Soda Stream in lockdown one. Now we have a cannister of CO2 for refilling the Soda Stream cannisters. It's 25p a litre of water otherwise. If you get one subscription it's £10 a cylinder not £15 but it's still pricey as one cylinder lasts us two weeks. Cheap fizzy water was 7.5p. I did see some in Tesco for 8p last week, so it's creeping back in.

Apologies if I am repeating what was already posted. I haven't had a chance to go through all the thread.