Brita & Nalgene: Filter Water Yourself
Brita and Nalgene have teamed up on a campaign to reduce bottled water waste. I’m not sure what to think of the ads above. I feel that many will just dismiss them as being extremist. Not quite as bad as red paint being thrown on a mink coat. Although, with so many plastic water bottles going to landfill, that is a shitload of oil. According to the site, FilterForGood.com and FastCompany - 38 million water bottles are sent to landfill annually. If you’ve never read Message In A Bottle from Fast Company last year - then go do it now. It’s quite the eye-opener.
Anyhoo - I thought ads were interesting and would share them with everyone. Click on them to enlarge. Josh Dorfman of The Lazy Environmentalist and LimeTV offers tips for “green-overs.” Not surprisingly, you can also buy custom Nalgene water bottles from the site, too.
I could write a long time on the topic of bottled water. For instance, the City of Chicago is saving over $400,000/year by cutting bottled water from its budget. I’m stopping before I rant…another time.
Enjoy.
UPDATE:
Our friend, Katie, brings up a great point about Brita. In the US, they don’t take the filter back for recycling. Boo, Clorox - clean up your mess and take them back!
Brita doesn’t have an environmental leg to stand on based on the fact that they don’t recycle their carbon filters here in North America (but apparently the UK is requiring them to). Jeeze, viewed with this information, these ads are SO hypocritical.
http://www.takebackthefilter.org/
Have they started making their bottles out of something other than plastic? Doesn’t it require oil to manufacture their products, too? Yes, I realize that a reusable bottle cuts down on the amount of natural resources that we waste, but I’m really tired of plastic touching everything I eat and drink!
By the way, has Brita eliminated BPA from their pitchers and filters yet? Give me a 100% recyclable metal bottle with some good, old-fashioned tap water and I’m good to go.
maybe I can be the devil’s advocate for a moment, but at a minimum, at least this campaign will get people thinking about the problem. And who is to say it will have the effect of people rushing directly to the arms of brita. Random bottled water drinker might stop and say …gee, I guess I never really thought about how much waste is involved.
I don’t think society as a whole is going to make the great leap in the right direction without turning around first and taking the time to pause, and if its a half measure like buying a reusable plastic bottle to replace the 1000’s of plastic bottles they would otherwise use, well…its a start. And some might go so far as to even wonder why plastic at all?
Kori -
I wholeheartedly agree that any awareness to switching off of bottled water is great. Even if Brita has some downsides, I still think it’s better than buying cases of water.
And to answer everyone - I am a Sigg guy. I have two (home and work), my wife has one, and each of my kids has one. My daughter is probably the only first grader in her school with a Sigg - it’s pretty darn cute, though - little hearts all over it. My son has a soccer one. Some people at work had meetings with Google and they gave them Google branded Sigg bottles - pretty cool