Next time you have to provide drinks at a corporate event, offer your clients refreshments, or find something hydrating on a hot day, consider this: tap water provides a safe, cost-effective and environmentally-friendly alternative to bottled water. Manufacturers have worked to convince customers that paying a premium for a disposable, plastic container full of water is worth the expense. Yet a growing body of research holds that bottled water might not be worth the hype—and that your business is better off without it.
Disposable water bottles are fast becoming a serious environmental hazard. In the United States alone, 30 billion water bottles are sent to landfills every year, and every bottle takes a shocking 1,000 years to decompose. That adds up to a lot of trash. Simply producing the plastic bottles themselves generates waste: it takes 3 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water, the Sierra Club reports, and a United Nations study concludes that producing bottled water for the U.S. market requires 17 million barrels of oil per year.
Bottled water generates much more waste than tap water, and generates little heath benefit in return. In fact, because of the structure of federal regulation, most tap water might actually provide a safer and cleaner alternative. Regulation of bottled water is patchy at best. Between 60-70% of the bottled water sold in the United States is exempt from all FDA regulation, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) reported in a four-year study. The same report revealed that about one fourth of bottled water is actually just bottled tap water.
Switching to tap water makes sense, both for the sake of the planet and the sake of your account book. In New York City, for example, an individual’s consumption of eight glasses of tap water per day for a year costs only 49 cents. Eight glasses of bottled water per day for a year, in contrast, costs a whopping $14,000.
Whether your business is a restaurant, a tech startup or a hair salon, offering employees and clients tap water rather than bottled water can add up to big savings over time. Providing pitchers of water in elegant glasses or reusable mugs can even serve as a marketing tool, and signal your company’s commitment to environmental responsibility. If you’re worried about the purity of tap water in your area, inexpensive water filtration systems provide a safe and easy alternative to water coolers. Encourage your employees to use reusable mugs and bottles, and if not, to recycle any bottled of water they purchase. As part of a Green Business Makeover, your local Green Irene Eco-Consultant can introduce you to many other water purity and waste reduction ideas, as well as to Green Irene’s full line of business products, including a premium 10-stage countertop water filter, reusable water bottles, modular recycling receptacles, and much more.
Sustainably yours,
Green Irene
Face it. Your small business needs to purchase many goods and services to ensure it runs smoothly and prospers. That is a fact we all need to accept, but we also need to accept the fact that your business can purchase goods and services in a way that supports socially responsible and green efforts. Green purchasing is the art of buying goods and services that have reduced footprints and support socially responsible causes. By purchasing green goods and services, not only can you eliminate potential problems, such as toxic substances in materials, but you can also significantly reduce your business’ footprint.
Most of the goods and services your business needs carry a footprint. Whether it is paper sourced from a rainforest or energy sourced from dirty coal, goods and services used by your business tend to carry along an environmental and social impact. But through the art of green purchasing, your business can reduce this impact and help steer manufacturers towards more sustainable practices and production methods. Green Irene provides you with all you need to know about green purchasing through its broad network of local Eco-Consultants and its comprehensive Ask Green Irene Service.
You no longer have to spend time trying to figure out how you can make an impact through the way you buy. Green Irene has done all the research you need to make critical decisions about green purchasing. Ask a local Green Irene Eco-Consultant today to learn more about our services. You can help us Green The World, One Office at a Time!
