Elite Brands Are on a Quest for Microplastic-Free Water－By Fiorella Valdesolo,WSJ

This summer’s hottest drink isn’t a matcha latte or a billion-dollar smoothie . It’s a bottle of water.

From the shelves of bougie Los Angeles grocer Erewhon to private events at clubs like Casa Cipriani, Loonen water has become the chosen hydration of the chic, affluent and health-conscious. Its glass carafes appeal to eco-anxious consumers who want to eradicate microplastics from their lives. And as water filtration has become an obsession of the rich, the brand’s stainless-steel process has helped it market $3.99 bottles （and at some stores, nearly $6 bottles） to an upscale clientele.

“Loonen has become this if-you-know-you-know ‘wellness girl’ accessory,” said Whitney Fransway, a star of the Bravo reality show “In the City.” Real Housewife Lisa Rinna and pop star Dua Lipa have posted online with bottles in frame. Loonen said it sends free products to “people we think might genuinely be interested” but does not pay influencers.

“It kept showing up in my feed for weeks before I ever saw a bottle in person,” says Allegra Lorenzotti, brand director at Ash Hotels. Suddenly, there it was: at her gym, in the Tribeca mom stroller, for sale at the upscale Happier Grocery .

Every few years, a new, elite form of hydration seizes the zeitgeist. Evian gave way to Fiji. Jennifer Aniston made Smartwater a cultural phenomenon. Liquid Death gave hydration an air of vice for the Cali-sober concert crowd. Mountain Valley’s green glass bottles, guzzled by Jay-Z and Gwyneth Paltrow, were for moguls. Essentia, the supercharged ionized alkaline water, was for models and Kardashians.

“Once plain water became suspect, it became a category you could charge a premium to solve,” said Jenna Movsowitz, co-founder of Express Checkout, a Substack newsletter about trends in consumer packaged goods.

Loonen was founded in 2025 by Clara Sieg, who cut her teeth in venture capital, and David Kimmell, a former Spindrift executive. Sieg said that when she was trying to get pregnant, she became curious about what was in her water, food and household products. “It led me down a path of learning a lot about microplastics and endocrine disrupters and how bad they are for your health,” she said. Studies have found that bottled water contains higher levels of microplastics than tap.

Sieg said Loonen aims to be transparent with consumers about its products. She said Loonen sources from a Southern California spring, uses stainless-steel filtration （never any chemical intervention or plastic, Sieg said）, then adds natural minerals like Celtic Sea salt, magnesium, potassium and calcium. It publishes quality reports on its website that it says are conducted by third-party laboratories. Its bottles feature QR codes that direct to those reports.

Loonen declined to say how many bottles it had produced to date but shared that it is available in 2,000 stores, restaurants and cafes, as well as on Amazon. The company raised $6.1 million in seed funding last December, according to PitchBook.

In the fancy-water market, Loonen is nowhere near the top of the price-point index. At The Row’s fashion show in Paris last fall, the only refreshment was bottles of Litewater, which claims to be the “purest in the world” （$248 for a 12-pack of its glass-bottle 5 ppm Deuterium Depleted Water）. Luxury hydration brand One Water Global （about $45 for a 20-pack） was the sponsor at Davos last year. Celebrity facialist Iván Pol gives clients like Emma Stone a glass of Hallstein water （$71 for a six-pack） before his signature Beauty Sandwich treatments. According to Tribeca Beverage Company, a distributor that delivers countless gallons to the five boroughs, requests for alkaline （over spring and distilled） have skyrocketed.

“Consumers are increasingly willing to trade up to functional options that offer health benefits,” said Matt Herrick, CEO of the International Bottled Water Association, adding that the global alkaline market is valued at around $5 billion.

“Health really is wealth right now,” said Sammy Nussdorf, founder of luxury grocer Meadow Lane. His store was the first in New York City to stock Loonen, selling 2,700 bottles in its first two weeks.

At the end of the day, water is water. Roger Fielding, a professor of nutrition at Tufts University, said there’s no evidence that elite brands have any sort of biological or physiological advantage over other bottled waters. Samantha McBride, a University of Pennsylvania professor studying water security and sustainability, said it’s unlikely that any bottled versions are completely free of microplastic traces.

“Plastics are everywhere,” she said.

While its bottles are glass, Loonen’s caps contain a plastic lining, though the company says that it is unpainted, uncoated, PFAS- and BPA-free. The June quality report published on its website says that an independent laboratory did not detect microplastics in its water. In June, the app Oasis, which lets consumers scan product bar codes and view independent testing data, said that a bottle of Loonen it sent for testing showed higher levels of microplastics than other glass bottles it had analyzed. Oasis declined to comment.

“We’ve reached out to Oasis a few times to better understand the lab they used, their methodology, and the chain of custody for the samples, but they haven’t shared that information with us,” Loonen said in a statement. “As they note in their own video, testing instruments can contain some of the same materials identified in their results, which is a known cause of false results.”

The promise of these premium waters is purity. “You’re not buying an ingredient, you’re buying proof of what’s been removed,” said Movsowitz. It’s peace of mind in the form of marketing. Pour it in a pretty bottle, sprinkle some social-media buzz and you have a product that’s as much about joining a cultural moment as it is about the water itself.

Recently, cookbook author and food-world oracle Alison Roman gave Loonen her social-media stamp of approval after discovering it at Two Bunch Palms hotel in Desert Hot Springs, Calif.

“I’m so offline these days that I thought I had unearthed some cool legendary West Coast water brand, only to be served an Instagram ad for it later that day,” Roman said.