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

Commentary: Green Irene can help your business Go GREEN right away. Our Green Office Makeover is an affordable, high-quality service that can get you on the path towards a Green Office. Our Local Eco-Consultants are ready to provide you with the support needed to implement specific measures that will help your business Go GREEN. Green Irene also carries various products at SHOPGREENIRENE that can get you going right after your first Green Office Makeover. So, why wait? Join the rest of the business community in Going GREEN with Green Irene!

Article excerpted from Environmental News Network:

When it comes to investing in sustainable business behaviors and programs, more than half of corporate marketers and communicators believe that their organizations will increase their involvement in environmental sustainability initiatives during the next two to three years, according to a survey conducted by the American Marketing Association and Fleishman-Hillard, Inc. In addition, half of those surveyed believe that economic realities will actually encourage the adoption of sustainability practices.

The survey shows that 58% of marketing and communication leaders believe their companies will place more emphasis on developing corporate sustainability opportunities in the months ahead, despite the belt tightening that is happening in the business world.

“At a time when the economy requires everyone to stay focused on the essentials, it’s noteworthy that businesses are putting sustainability programs into that must-do column,” said Nancy Costopulos, chief marketing officer of the American Marketing Association. “It is a signal that the business community is embracing environmental sustainability in a way that this country has probably never seen before.”

More than half of those surveyed believe that sustainability is an essential element of their company’s reputation right now. Nearly three-quarters believe that corporate reputation, corporate culture and technological advancements will be the drivers for sustainability. The new administration’s policies will further accelerate the adoption of corporate sustainability programs, according to 63% of responders in the survey.

There are many reasons why we need to move to a greener world as a society. In his most recent book titled Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Lester R. Brown not only outlines the facts about increasing consumption and degradation of natural resources, including its consequences, but also lays out a plan for reversing escalating negative trends. The problems described below conform a strong reason why homes and small businesses should do as much as they can to reduce their footprint regardless of the economic benefits they may accrue by doing so. An easy way to take quick action is to sign up with Green Irene for a Green Home Makeover or a Green Office Makeover, services that will help you take specific steps to reduce your footprint, in many cases while saving money.

A Civilization in TroubleThe world is currently facing a backlog of unresolved and sometimes worsening social and environmental problems. These include:

• Rapid population growth, which threatens to increase consumption rates and therefore resource degradation;
• Falling water tables and drying rivers, leading to a global freshwater crisis that will just get worse with climate change;
• Shrinking forests, which not only reduces what’s available for future use, but also affects biodiversity and its impact on human systems;
• Eroding soils and increasing deserts, which are leading to the loss of agricultural land and putting pressure on food prices globally;
• Collapsing species stocks, especially fisheries and species of great value to ecosystem stability. In turn, this leads to deterioration of ecosystem services, including water filtration, climate regulation, food provision, flood control, and materials provision; and
• Climate change, which not only threatens to force species to extinction, but also harm human civilization in significant ways, such as by flooding major coastal cities, impacting agricultural output, spreading infectious diseases, and increasing storm-related damage.

The Way Forward

The only way to avert these and many other problems our own activities are causing, we need to take decisive action ourselves. We need the government to shape the path towards a greener future, but we also need to make changes ourselves to reduce our footprint on the planet. That’s where Green Irene comes in.

Green Irene is ready to help American homes and businesses go green. Our trained eco-consultants are equipped to provide you with the necessary information and guidance to implement specific measures in your home and/or business to go green while saving money. Going GREEN is no longer about just reducing your footprint for the sake of future generations; it’s also about saving money now!

Green Irene also has a full support team that is ready to answer any questions you may have. We do the necessary research for you to implement changes to go green and provide clients access to our comprehensive online greenbase, Ask Green Irene. The time could not be better to take action. Going green today is responsible and strategic as it will help you save money in these difficult times. So, don’t wait any longer, go green today with Green Irene!