aquaBUBBLER Drinking Fountains and Sustainability
aquaBUBBLER is 100% committed to the principle of sustainability
Saving water has become an urgent priority for many countries around the world – especially Australia. So we spent two years consulting extensively to design a product that meets our stringent sustainability standards.
To minimise environmental impact, aquaBUBBLERS are designed to:
- Be robust enough to endure for a long time
- Be highly reliable so replacements are not required
- Require minimal maintenance.
- Be dismantled and completely recycled – a process we manage for our customers.
- Include fully serviceable components – we’ll replace any part of the unit as part of our five-year guarantee, eliminating the need to replace an entire unit.
aquaBUBBLER innovation
Designing aquaBUBBLER for sustainability resulted in two powerful innovations:
Custom designed drinking fountain tap
Our research indicated that a water fountain’s wasted water is predominantly caused by tap failures. In most cases, this is because taps of generic design are not properly integrated into the fountain. These taps then need to be replaced and are disposed of as rubbish. Rather than using an off-the-shelf tap, aquaBUBBLER’s tap is specifically crafted to integrate into the fountain casing to achieve reliable operation – even in harsh conditions. The easy-to-adjust water pressure tap, combined with a non-squirt water exit nozzle means that it doesn’t drip, and the large self-closing push button makes it an ideal water-saving solution. Excess water is also recycled following use, going back into land use instead of to storm water or sewer systems.
Robust polyethylene body
The bright colours available for aquaBUBBLER products are not all for show – the polyethylene body was chosen because of its reduced manufacturing impacts and because it is easy to recycle – the polyethylene can be easily separated from the metal internal plumbing and drip tray.
Our mission to reduce reliance on plastic water bottles
As well as threatening our water supply, the increased reliance on plastic in today’s society seriously affects our natural resources and pollution levels. Reducing the pollution caused by manufacturing, transporting and disposing of plastic drinking bottles is so important that many communities and local government institutions have banned plastic drinking bottles at their facilities. This is fantastic for sustainability, but it can leave people without ready access to clean drinking water throughout the day. aquaBUBBLER is fitted with a second, lower tap which acts as a refill station, allowing everyone to refill their own drink bottles; All the convenience of bottled water without the waste and cost of purchasing disposable plastic bottles.
Using less bottled water may seem like a tiny drop in the ocean in making a difference to our environment, but you may be surprised to know what’s really involved in producing that innocent-looking bottle of water probably sitting on your desk right now:
- Australians spend over half a billion dollars per year buying 582.9 million litres of bottled water (IBISWorld’s Bottled Water Manufacturing in Australia January 2010)
- With just 43% of PET bottles being recycled (Pacia 2008–09 National Plastics Recycling Survey), well over half of all plastic bottles enter landfill or are discarded as rubbish into the environment.
- The NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change found that producing one litre of bottled water uses around 200ml of oil.
- The Pacific Institute estimates that the energy needed to produce one bottle of water is the equivalent to filling a bottle with oil up to a quarter of its volume.
- Every litre of bottled water produced uses 1.3 to 3 litres of water, according to bottled water company Mount Franklin.
- The Institute concludes that more than 145.7 million litres of oil was used in the production, transportation, refrigeration, and recycling/disposal of bottled water in Australia in 2009–10.
- Campaigns such as the Food and Water Watch’s Take Back the Tap and Yarra Valley Water’s Choose Tap are encouraging people to return to tap water instead of buying the bottled variety.
The University of Canberra has provided data which shows that installing an aquaBUBBLER on a tertiary campus can:
- reduce PET bottle consumption by 140,000 annually
- prevent 79,660 bottles going into landfill
- avoid using 16,800 litres of oil
- save 252 kilolitres of water
- save on waste reduction on bottled water packaging
