Sep 232009
 

Paper Water Bottle

Wherever you go these days, the horrendously overpriced single-use disposable plastic water bottle has become quite the trendy accessory, with an estimated 22 billion of them ending up in landfill each year.

The global bottled water market is expected to be worth US$ 86 billion in 2011. Most  bottled water is now supplied in plastic PET bottles, made from petrochemicals.

The first PET bottles (polyethylene terephthalate) appeared in 1975, ironically at the height of the OPEC world oil crisis.

Within a decade, the recyclable glass bottle was a rarity. Greenpeace estimates that 10 percent of the world’s plastic now ends up in the ocean, much of it in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an oceanic desert twice the size of Texas that supports very little life and is filled with exceptionally high concentrations of suspended plastic debris.

The disposable plastic water bottle has quickly become one of the world’s great environmental threats.

Not only do we waste hundreds of millions of dollars on something that is freely available to most of Australia’s population, but in Australia alone, a year’s supply of bottled water costs the planet over 300,000 barrels of oil a year.

That’s how much of one of the world’s most precious resources it takes to package, ship and refrigerate a product that is already piped to every single suburban premises for next to nothing, according to Sunday Age calculations.

This is why the 360 Paper Bottle is so astoundingly cool. It’s the first totally recyclable paper container,  made from renewable bamboo stock with micro-PLA film.

Developed by a US branding agency, it’s still in early product distribution stage. Let’s hope it catches on.

Bottom line: An alternative to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Wherehttp://www.brand-image.com/en/#/brand-vision-water.php
How much : Still in concept stage

Sep 222009
 

Despite our over-the-top consumption of fizzy drink, double caramel macchiato soy lattes and alcopops, it seems that plain old H2O still plays a fairly important part in the average human diet.

Until recently, however, water had fallen from grace in our consumption-driven society; possibly because marketing-types were focused on water-with-added-value, not imagining that people who lived in a society rich enough to have clean drinking water literally on tap would be silly enough to part with good money to buy it.

Well, we live in a society that is indeed astoundingly, unbelievably silly, to the tune of about $ 400 million spent on bottled water in Australia alone (and more on the evils of the disposable plastic bottle in tomorrow’s post.)

Meanwhile – we have the Swiggy. These reusable plastic water bottles attach to each wrist and hold up to 5.5 ounces (that’s around 160 mL) of water, although there’s no reason they couldn’t hold an equal quantity of vodka, gin or both.

The Swiggie was invented by a Texan woman who collapsed from dehydration while running on a hot day.

Clearly running on a hot day in Texas without water is somewhat foolish; however despite its silly name and that loud yelling video that launches the instant you click on the website, there’s something kind of cool about Swiggies.

In fact, for extra cool, the Swiggies people suggest you can even pop your swiggies in the freezer before you go out jogging. (Though that sounds like a bad idea to me; wouldn’t they become really heavy and uncomfortable and freeze your wrists?)

Bottom line: Break the drought and accessorise with water
Where:  www.swiggies.com
How much : US $ 12.95 for a set of two,  plus postage