hotel with plants

How to ditch single-use bottles and save money

Water – it’s an essential part of how we work and how we live.

And sadly, it’s become normalised to drink water from a plastic bottle. I still remember the first time I saw plastic bottled water, I was at university at the time, the late 90s. I remember buying a bottle after seeing it and then thinking, why on earth would I spend $2 (at the time!) on a bottle of water when I can get it from the drinking fountain????

Yet, since then, it’s become more and more prevalent. Fear-mongering from big industry like Nestle and Coca Cola have led many people to believe it’s the only option. In the tourism and hospitality sector, we’ve fallen into the habit of thinking this is needed to provide good service.

In Australia, it’s law to provide free drinkable water in food and beverage venues. However, the problem persists.

The amount of pollution generated from the bottled-water industry is off the charts!

Did you know?

That every 1 litre bottle of water takes 3 litres of water to create?? Plus 250ml of oil in the production of that bottle!

What’s more is the transport and expense. Millions of emissions and dollars spent transporting water all over the world for something that can be sourced and filtered on site.

want to be safe when they travel – it’s up to us in the tourism sector to provide and assure them that plastic-free and safe drinking water is an option.

When I was moving to Cambodia, I honestly thought that I’d have to succumb to drinking bottled-water – the biggest bottles I’d seen in Cambodia at that time were 6litres I think, not as bad as 500ml but not great either!

I quickly learned that there were 20L refillable bottles. and soon after that I could get a portable filter that cost me $20 and lasted me 4 years!

It makes me SO HAPPY when I see beautifully displayed plastic-free drinking water in hotels.

Back in 2018 I did a case study with the Victoria Angkor Hotel in Siem Reap. Their 130-room hotel implemented a refill system and began saving US$ EVERY MONTH on not providing plastic bottles.

That’s $5,400 USD every year!

Not to mention around 100,000 single-use bottles NOT used!
Saving 100,000 litres of water SAVED!
25,000 litres of OIL not used in the creation of plastic!

Get in touch if you’re ready to change the way your hotel serves water!
Ready to implement change now? Get my 6-Step roadmap to sustainable hotels here.

Want to chat about sustainability with me?
Check dates for the next chat.

Join

0 Comments

Leave a Reply

Join

Work With Me