Anyone who owns a hot water bottle should check the code printed on it before using it, as failing to understand the symbol could leave people at risk of burns. The warning comes after the MoneySavingExpert (MSE) team shared advice on Instagram, noting that burst, split and leaking hot water bottles cause burns every year.
How to read the safety symbol
Hot water bottles are mostly made of rubber and are typically covered with a soft, cosy material. Beneath any cover lies an important reminder that hot water bottles do not last forever and should be thoroughly checked before every use. Generally, it is advisable to replace hot water bottles after a couple of years of use.
If people cannot remember how long they have owned a specific product, every hot water bottle sold in the UK should have a simple symbol on it to help work out its expiry date. Unlike food in the supermarket, hot water bottles do not simply have a calendar date stuck on them. Instead, there should be a flower- or wheel-shaped mark with numbers and dots.
The MSE team explained that the centre number stands for the year the bottle was made. There should be 12 segments around the wheel, each representing a month of the year. The dots indicate which week of that month the bottle was made - not a specific day. In the online example, the bottle said 23 in the centre, with three dots in the second segment, meaning the hot water bottle was made sometime during the third week of February 2023.
How to dispose of an expired bottle
An expired rubber or synthetic hot water bottle should be thrown into general household waste (black bin). Natural and synthetic rubber cannot be processed in standard kerbside recycling bins. Any fleece, wool, knitted, or cotton cover should be removed and placed into a textile recycling bank or a local charity or clothing drop-off.
Why hot water bottles do not use a normal date system
A hot water bottle does not have a fixed expiration date. Its lifespan depends entirely on when it is first used and how it is cared for. If a manufacturer stamped a simple expiration date on a bottle, it would be inaccurate, as a bottle could sit in a warehouse or shop for a year before being sold, meaning a pre-printed expiration date would incorrectly shorten its usable lifespan.
To print a standard calendar date on every hot water bottle, factories would have to shut down production and manually change the metal engravings in the mould every single day, or even every week. The established wheel system is permanently fixed into the mould. To update the date, the factory only needs to change a tiny, inexpensive central pin or add an extra dot to the mould at the start of the week.
