Sunday, March 1, 2009

Wasteful Bottled Water And A Business Opportunity


Have you ever wondered about the wide-spread presence of bottled water where there was none just a decade back. Many a times, many of us find it difficult to gulp down any but bottled water. Even in the restaurants, we refuse the free water served and prefer to buy something bottled even if it is the same free water bottled at a filthy plant.

This seem to me a really great piece of marketing skills. First, they were bundled as mineral water supposedly good for health. Later, this mineral tag was removed since in reality there weren't any mineral in there. This tendency for buying bottled water seems rather foolhardy to me, but nevertheless it is a great business opportunity to create wealth out of ...water!

This perceived need of clean drinking water is fueling the demand for bottled water. Bottled water is a wasteful way of satisfying this need because:
  1. Around 2.7 liter of water is required to process 1 liter of bottled water.
  2. Lot of resources are wasted in filling, packaging, transportation, storage, and cooling.
  3. It creates more and more garbage of plastic bottles.


You may try a simple Internet search on "actual cost of bottled water."

Now, bottled water is no more mineral water of the past as it was marketed earlier. People just need clean and cold drinking water and are not concerned about its mineral contents.

This need of clean and cold drinking water can be fulfilled by much cheaper and efficient means and the technology is also very cheaply available, the water purifier machines. These water vending machines can be installed at bus stands, railway station, and other public places with collaboration with municipal corporations or given to shop owners on franchise basis who would take care of the machines and provide space. Empty bottles can be sold or people can bring in their own bottles for refilling. This will reduce the number of bottles in use since people will be able to refill and need not necessarily buy another bottle to get the water within it. There can be some kind of automatic vending system where in people can insert some coins and get 1 L of water and/or empty bottles thereby reducing the man power cost too.

The present environment frenzy can be capitalized by advertising about how much damage to environment this system saves by reducing plastic usage, transportation, etc. This can be used to ask for tax breaks too. And how about earning and selling carbon credits!

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3 comments:

  1. I have been reading out many of your articles and i can claim pretty nice stuff. I will make sure to bookmark your blog. water purifier price

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Shaik. It is nice to know that someone is still reading these even though I have stopped writing long back.

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