Last in a series of posts celebrating the first annual World Tap Water Week at Green Thing. If you stick to tap water for the next 12 months you’ll reduce demand for half-liter plastic bottles by 2,920. That’s 1,168,000 years they won’t need to biodegrade (if they did so consecutively rather than concurrently). Start the countdown to next year.
In addition to all of the fantastic campaigns, product designs and projects going on, here’s a bit more inspiration with 7 more tap ideas.
1. Plastiki is a boat made from 12,000 bottles collected from landfill. Lead by Daive de Rothschild, the boat has been on a worldwide tour to raise awareness of the amount of plastic bottle waste there is out there in the oceans and to get people everywhere to pledge to beat waste.
2. This vending machine sells SIGGS filled with pure, plain and perfect tap water. It’s a great replacement for bottled water vending machines.
3. Another vending machine idea, but this one comes loaded with ‘dirty water’. To increase peoples’ awareness of water quality in poorer nations, UNICEF installed a dirty bottled water vending machine in New York. Part of the genius behind this idea is people expect bottled water to be clean, when in fact it could actually be full of bacteria.
4. This posh urban water filter, called 321 Water functions like a French Press. It’s portable, lightweight and small.
5. Tap’dNY. There’s something about their honesty in bottling a municipal supply that’s amusing. The plastic bottle is reusable and recyclable. The idea of selling people the same water that comes out of their tap and making a big fuss about it- that’s pretty special.
Ok, so we lied about 7. There are so many fabulous, inventive ideas out there. So we’ve left this one open as surely there’s great stuff out there we haven’t come across. So do share! The last two ingenious ideas are yours for the choosing ;)
Honourable mention
“Boxed Water is Better” is definitely onto something. They’ve solved on half of the equation, getting rid of plastic waste from bottled water, but they’ve missed out on something crucial: they should fill their boxed water with tap.
(This post is part of a series on Green Thing for World Tap Water Week. Find out more!)
Katherine Hui is currently the Social site editor at Green Thing, a web-based public service in London that inspires people to lead greener lives through creative content.
Before this, she worked as the Development Manager at Social Innovation Camp, an organization that encourages people to use web and mobile-based technology to mobilise social change. She oversaw 300 ideas submission and helped build 20 prototypes – five of which have gone on to get further funding or investment.
Katherine’s came over to the UK form Canada in 2007 for an MSc program at the London School of Economics. Before arriving in London, she managed a small environmental start-up in Vancouver called the Canadian Climate Change Alliance.
Katherine is football mad. She is a loyal supporter of Arsenal FC, plays for Islington Borough Ladies FC and coaches for Gunners in Islington in her spare time. Her second favourite hobby is kite surfing and she can sometimes be found chasing the wind.
