For years people have blasted bottled water and the companies that manufacture it claiming that it’s bad for the environment. We only partially agree. We know that’s a pretty bold statement coming from a company that is #1, a small family run organization, and #2 seeing that custom bottled water is our flagship product. Water bottles are no more or less evil than plastic soda bottles or milk jugs. But with that said we’d like to show you why our bottles are different and what we’ve done to make our custom bottled water product better for the environment.
Almost all standard PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles are made from virgin PET resin, meaning they are made from products that have not been recycled. What we did to avoid that was to start making our own bottles using materials made from 100% recycled PET. So realistically when you are drinking spring water from our bottle that bottle might have already been another bottle in a previous life. Don’t worry, the PET goes through a very stringent purification process when it's ground down. It's cleansed at several steps throughout the process. If you're curious, here is how it looks before we start the cleansing and blow molding process to make the bottles.
By bringing the process in-house we are able to blow mold our own bottle shape, unique to our 100% recycled PET or “rPET” bottles and here it is.
Our Custom Labeled Bottled Water Is Made From 100% Recycled Materials
he process we've developed allows us to use 45% less energy and emit 65% less CO2 than if we were to produce virgin PET bottles for our custom bottled water. Along with using rPET another big reason we save energy is our bottle manufacturing is done on site right at the source of the spring, where we cap and fill the bottles. In doing so we have eliminated the production and transportation of the bottles from one location to another location, which is what nearly every other bottled water manufacturer does. It’s a closed loop system where in theory the bottles can be used over and over again.
People need to recycle more. This last piece of the process, we unfortunately, don’t have control over. Here are some harsh facts about PET plastics:
- Every year in the U.S. in excess of 38 billion plastic bottles end up in landfills.
- 15 billion pounds of plastic are produced in the U.S. every year & only 1 billion pounds are recycled.
- 90% of the trash in the ocean is from plastic.
- More than 75% of plastic water bottles are never recycled; they’re simply thrown away.
- It takes 47 million gallons of oil to create plastic water bottles each year.
By recycling we can drastically reduce these numbers and have an extremely positive effect on the environment. So recycle everyone! In all honesty, in today’s world there is almost always a recycling bin next to a trash can, so toss your bottles in the recycling bin it’s just as easy.
If you want to know more about our process for creating the rPET bottles we use when creating your custom labeled bottled water, or have additional questions, please email us at [email protected]