Arggh…she got me.

“She” is Michelle Bernhart, communicator par excellence, and chair of the IABC Social Responsibility Committee. We’ve worked together on the SR Committee for more than a year to launch the SR LINK, a web site focused on SR communications.

In a recent post, Michelle managed to strike me (and probably many others) in a vulnerable spot: our love of bottled water. Although the main point of Michelle’s post is a “greenwashing” attempt by Coke to seem eco-friendly on Earth Day, the post made me confront my own feelings about bottled water.

How can I justify taking swigs of filtered tap water and emptying bottle after bottle that will pile up in landfills? The answer is: Convenience and product performance. Not very altruistic, but if you want to change my behavior, you need to understand my motivations.

Convenience. Water contained in uncovered mugs and cups is not convenient. The water spills. Over the years, I’ve watched many coworkers accidentally tip a cup of water and then have to scramble to salvage printed documents, notebooks and other items from the ensuing spreading puddle. I’ve also experienced the jolt of realizing that, while tossing in my sleep, I’ve knocked over a glass of water from the end table next to my bed.

That doesn’t happen with bottled water. You twist off the top, take a swig, then replace the cap. Nice, tidy, convenient.

Product performance. Most bottled water containers are shaped to fit comfortably within your grasp, and as mentioned above, offer easy twist-off caps to secure the contents between sips. They also are slim-shaped, making them less obtrusive on a table or other surface. That is not the case with the reusable drink containers that I’ve used over time.

I still use the first such container that I received. It was sold in the mid 1990s to employees of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, in one of the first corporate “green” campaigns held at places in which I’ve worked. I’m looking at it now. (Yes, even if you’re reading this at 2 a.m., I’m still looking at it–what a design!)

The cup is 6 inches tall by 4 inches wide, which makes it wider and just slightly shorter than Wendy’s biggie-sized drink cup. I know because I’m looking at that now, as well. The FRB Chicago cup came with a plastic lid that my wife threw out years ago. Even when I had the lid, it didn’t protect against spills—as would a Dasani or other bottled water. That’s because it had a hole in the lid for a straw to pass through. When the cup is tipped, water streams out of that hole.

Other reusable containers that I’ve used and rejected in the past usually have some design or performance flaw that makes them awkward to use. Some were too tall, too easily tipped, or came with a straw that seemed to be at least 3 feet long and that dangled dangerously out of the top.

Although swigging from a bottle of water can seem unsophisticated, making a mess by spilling a non-secured cup of water can be just as unsophisticated.

The best solution to me would be to create a reusable container shaped like bottled water, with an easily removable twist off cap that would secure the drink between your sips. I would invent it, but I’m too busy defending myself from disparaging blog posts from Michelle (j/k).

Another question: Why isn’t anyone up in arms about the millions of plastic cups from fast-food restaurants that take up just as much room in landfills?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 5:46 pm and is filed under IABC, Social Responsibility, communications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.