Zero Waste Week

6th – 10th September is Zero Waste Week (ZWW), an award-winning annual campaign raising awareness about the environmental impact of waste. Whether you’re an individual, business, school or community group, you can join in and reduce the amount of waste you send to landfill.

Founded in 2008 by Rachelle Strauss, the seeds of ZWW were planted in 2004 when severe flooding in the village of Boscastle in Gloucestershire, UK directly affected the Strauss family and prompted Rachelle to begin acting to help prevent similar incidents occurring in the future. It was her realisation that man made climate change may have been responsible for the flooding and that action needed to be taken (a position we still find ourselves in today). During the following years the Strauss Family developed their interests in sustainable living as a personal challenge to lessen their environmental impact.

Having started as a UK-only initiative, by 2017 participation had grown to 73 countries with many of them now running their own independent ZWW campaigns.

Zero Waste Week adopts the adage there’s no such place as ‘away’, meaning when we throw something away, it goes somewhere else, often causing harm or toxicity to the eco-system. The campaign's main directive is to bring awareness to people that we are all individually and collectively responsible for what we consume and that the short time of usefulness is only a small part of the overall life cycle of any product.

At Waterlogic, reducing waste and limiting the impact our business has on the environment is of great significance to us. As the impact of climate change becomes more and more real with each passing year, playing our own part and encouraging our customers to do likewise to preserve our planet is a responsibility we take very seriously.

Our 1.5m point-of-use water dispensers around the world are helping to save 23.8 billion single-use plastic bottles each year, many of which would otherwise end up in landfill or oceans. We are also taking as many as 60 million single-use plastic bottles out of the hospitality supply chain annually by supplying reusable glass bottles to be used with our high-volume water dispensers.

Refurbishing existing dispensers is another way Waterlogic is reducing waste. In 2020 alone, 21,624 machines were restored to full working order and the plan is to reach over 27,000 by the end of 2021.

In China our manufacturing headquarters has more than 500 suppliers and we receive a substantial amount of waste packaging materials with every delivery. To offset this, we have designed a model over many years that reduces shipping and transportation and removes packaging waste. We have developed a reusable and recyclable packaging scheme with our local suppliers; once their trucks deliver to the factory and offload the items, we return packaging from previous consignments for them to reuse.

In collaboration with one of our largest suppliers, we have completely eradicated cardboard boxes from their deliveries. The supplier, who delivers three times a day, has replaced cardboard with more durable longer-lasting plastic boxes.

These major green initiatives mean that no packaging entering our factory is ever discarded.

We are consistently looking at all aspects of our business for ways to reduce waste and we know there’s plenty of work for us, and our customers, to do. By working together, we can all make a positive difference. 

If you would like to get involved with ZWW and help to be part of the solution, visit their website here and start reducing waste today!