Tritan vs PC vs PP: choosing a food-contact plastic for water bottles and drinkware
Almost every enquiry we get starts with a picture and ends with a question about material. Here is how the three main options actually differ on the production floor.
At a glance
| PP | PC | Tritan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clarity | Translucent at best | Glass-clear | Glass-clear |
| Continuous use | up to ≈ 100–110 °C | up to ≈ 115–130 °C | up to ≈ 95–100 °C |
| Dishwasher | Yes, top rack | Yes | Yes, top rack |
| BPA question | No | Yes — conventional PC is made with bisphenol A | No — BPA-free |
| Resin cost | Lowest | Middle | Highest |
| Typical use | Shakers, school bottles, lunch boxes | Clear sport bottles where price leads | Premium clear bottles for the US and EU |
PP — polypropylene
PP is the workhorse of plastic drinkware. It is opaque or translucent rather than glass-clear, tolerates boiling water, resists most cleaning chemicals and is the cheapest of the three. It is also the most forgiving to mould, which keeps tooling and unit costs down.
The trade-off is appearance. PP cannot deliver the glass-like clarity that retail shelves increasingly expect, and it scratches more visibly than PC. For shaker bottles, school bottles and lunch boxes it is usually the right answer; for a premium transparent bottle it is not.
PC — polycarbonate
PC gives genuine optical clarity and high impact strength — it is the reason so many sport bottles look like glass but survive a fall onto concrete. It also holds crisp detail from the mould, which matters for textured grips and moulded logos.
PC is where the BPA conversation lives. Conventional polycarbonate is produced using bisphenol A. European buyers in particular will ask about this directly, and some retail programmes exclude PC entirely. If your market is sensitive to BPA, either specify a BPA-free grade and hold the test report, or move to Tritan.
Tritan — copolyester
Tritan is a copolyester developed specifically to give PC-like clarity and toughness without bisphenol A. It handles dishwashers well, does not haze quickly, and passes the compliance questions that PC triggers.
It costs more — noticeably more per kilogram — and it is less forgiving in moulding, so cycle times are longer. For a promotional giveaway at scale that difference matters; for a branded retail bottle it usually does not.
A short decision rule
If the bottle must be crystal clear and sold in Europe or to a BPA-sensitive brand, use Tritan. If it must be crystal clear and price is the binding constraint, use PC and hold your test reports. If clarity is not essential, use PP and spend the saving on a better lid.
Whichever you choose, the lid and seal matter more than the body. Most drinkware complaints we see are sealing failures, not material failures.
Hot drinks — and what about PET?
PP and PC both tolerate boiling water; Tritan is a cold and ambient-drink material and should not be filled with boiling water. If the product is meant to keep tea or coffee hot, the answer is usually not a plastic at all but a double-wall stainless-steel vacuum body — our article on vacuum tumblers explains how heat retention is tested.
PET is the fourth plastic buyers ask about. It tolerates only about 60–70 °C, is not dishwasher safe and can craze with some detergents, which is why it belongs in single-use bottles rather than reusable ones. Our temperature and dishwasher chart covers all five plastics.