TapIt Water
I think this is a wonderful idea. As I sit in my office after lunch, I’m always struck by how much plastic I throw away. It boggles the mind. Plastic cups, plastic bottles, plastic forks, plastic gum containers and the list goes on and on. Well, an organization has sprung up in New York that hopes to change that. By partnering with cafés, restaurants and other foodie shops, TapIt Water hopes that we can ditch the plastic bottle for good. I hope this changes our use of plastic bottles just as much as reusable grocery bags have done to the question: “paper or plastic?”
Here’s an excerpt from their website:
“Some people say its easy to go bottle-less: grab a glass from the kitchen cabinet and fill it from the tap. But what about when you’re away from your home or office? We’ve taken hundreds of local cafes and bound them together into a network that lets those who want water find those willing to provide it.
TapIt water bottle refilling network was founded in 2008 to give New Yorkers free access to clean sustainable water on the go. Café owners sign up as ‘partners’ to provide water to those who carry a reusable bottle. Partner locations are easy to find using our features (PC or Smartphone) or by downloading ‘TapIt Water’ from the . For those with limited access to technology, can be downloaded and can be found on café windows.”
Bravo on this initiative;
If you are stunned by your office’ use of plastic, consider the worlds–see “Pacific Trash Vortex”, or the Pacific Gyre, a low pressure zone in the North Pacific that’s become a natural collection reservoir for plastic waste estimated to be some 10K kilometers square now. The plastics photo-degrade into a soup that is ingested by fish and thus is enter the food chain. Aren’t we brilliant???
Learn more about the Plastic Vortex by following this team of innovators who are looking for ways to capture the debris with “possible retrieval and processing techniques that could be potentially employed to detoxify and recycle these materials into diesel fuel.”
Project Kaisei
Wow. Sounds like the name of an Electronica band. Thanks for posting this. Plastic just really bugs me. I designed a calendar last year made of recycled plastic. It was a client’s intention to show environmental awareness. I found it incredibly difficult to find suitable recycled plastics, but in the end found one chemical company that creates it. They had no idea how much of an impact a product like theirs could have to reduce the amount of plastic in our environment.
Thanks so much for posting about TapIt! My favorite quote during my time working for TapIt was a New Yorker who said, “I was tired of paying for the world’s most abundant resource.”
My pleasure Leah. I came across the TapIt website after reading an article on Springwise. They are always on the lookout for unique and innovative business ideas and post them daily. It would be interesting if TapIt and Project Kaisei could combine forces and bring awareness to the effects plastic has on our environment. Project Kaisei is heading to the Plastic Vortex this month to study it’s affects and if the plastic can be retrieved and recycled.