environmental impact – After how many litres does Soda Stream get more sustainable than bottled sparkling water – GWC Mag

Soda Stream is advertised as a more sustainable alternative to buying sparkling water in bottles. The main selling points are that no water filled bottles need to be manufactured, transported and recycled anymore.

I am a little skeptical, because the Soda Stream machine itself needs to be manufactured in the first place and producing / maintaining the gas bottles also does not seem zero effort to me.

I do not doubt, that the machines do make sense when used a lot, but are there any data on how many bottles need to be carbonated until the environmental break even (e.g. in CO2) is reached?

I know similar articles about how many ebooks would need to be read on a single ebook reader until its production becomes more sustainable than printing the books on paper instead. For Soda Stream I do however only find articles that deal with which option is cheaper.

I would be interested in comparisons for single use plastic bottles, deposit plastic bottles and deposit glass bottles.