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1 Billion. That is the number of disposable plastic bottles that could be kept out of landfills every year if just 10% of the students in the US, K-12, would switch to reusable bottles. This number is hard to believe and hard to visualize, but we’ve crunched the numbers and it’s true. The solution to this staggering amount of plastic waste is to reuse. By getting your children’s school to promote reusable bottles, you can help them “Join the Reusolution” and save that billion bottles.
Eliminating 10% of the disposable plastic bottles used by school children would also save 31 million gallons of oil, almost 400 million gallons of water, and 12 billion balloons worth (or 120 billion grams) of CO2 each year. The resources it takes to make these bottles is surprising, especially when you add them all up.
Collectively, parents would save over $25 million dollars in the first year by switching to tap water-based drinks from single serving drinks in disposable plastic bottles. This more than justifies the purchase of good quality reusable bottles.
To foster completely litter-less lunches, Back2Tap is offering reusable sandwich wraps and snack bags as well as custom-logoed stainless steel bottles for your school’s green fundraiser this year. Save money, save the planet - Join the Reusolution!
Starting a small business has presented many new experiences as well as frequent moments when my partners and I look at each other and say – “Wow, did you ever think you’d be doing this?” Dragging all our props into the convention center last Tuesday was definitely one of those moments. We had no idea what to expect or how Back2Tap would compare to the other exhibitors. Our booth turned out to be much better than some minimally adorned booths and pleasantly less commercial and cluttered than some big-time commercial fundraising company booths. We offered free tap water, a much less exciting option than the free pizza, cheesecake, chocolate and candies offered at other booths, but those who partook were quite grateful to quench their thirst with a healthy alternative.
One of the best parts of the day turned out to be watching people’s expressions as they first looked at our booth – they seemed puzzled but curious. Why was there a giant tower made of plastic bottles? What exactly was Back2Tap selling? Tap water? It took about 2-3 minutes to explain why bottled water is so wasteful and how selling Back2Tap stainless steel bottles as a green fundraiser could help the planet and help a school community. Only one person had heard of us, and only two people had considered this type of fundraising campaign. No other exhibitors offered a customized green fundraising item. Most of the other fundraising companies were offering the same old items- knickknacks, clothes, and unhealthy foods. Clearly, we were offering something new and different to the PTO Today audience.
For most of the day, all four of us were busy giving our elevator pitches to groups PTO parents as they wandered by our booth. I couldn’t help but notice that the booth across the aisle that had attracted lots of attention in the morning with its screen show and four active salespeople had quieted down by mid-day whereas we were still going strong. I think we were able to maintain our enthusiasm because we really believe that our cause, reducing plastic waste, is good beyond profits, and we get genuinely excited by convincing other people of that.
We noticed that some exhibitors had signs boasting of 55% profit margins for their customers. Is this number the best measure of a fundraising option? High profit margins usually mean the items are overpriced to the customer or are very cheaply made. We know from firsthand experience as parents and PTO volunteers that parents resent being asked to pay too much for fundraising items and lose enthusiasm when they are offered the same items they really don’t want year after year. This is why we chose to offer high quality reusable bottles priced close to retail with a 20-30% payback.
Tim Sullivan of PTO Today concurs in his March 2009 PTO Today article entitled: “More to Fundraising Than Profit”. Sullivan writes: “The best PTOs and PTAs aim to create a great community at their school, to grow parent involvement, to serve parents, and to help provide valuable resources for the school and the students.” This is exactly what Back2Tap is trying to do – spread a green movement through the school communities that will bring people together around a shared sense of concern and desire to do something good for the planet, for themselves and for their school.
I’m not sure how this happened, but twice this week I found myself sitting around a table with fellow “green teamers” discussing solar trees as a way to reduce our carbon footprint. First, I heard from Bob Ferguson about Envision Solar’s ground-breaking Solar Tree for parking lots. How brilliant is that? Parking lots are generally pretty hot, desolate places to begin with – putting up towers with photovoltaic cells couldn’t really “spoil” the ambiance there. In fact, the solar trees look pretty cool, and they provide some shade to cars and reduce the heat island effect caused by development. They even have outlets for charging electric cars. And of course, when they put a whole bunch of these trees together, they call them Solar Groves. Each tree in the grove produces 17,000 kWh per year, enough to power three typical San Diego homes for a year. Also fascinating, is their LifeVillage - an entire modular solar-powered village that can be constructed in developing nations to provide self-powered community infrastructure for people in need.
My second solar tree encounter this week was at a WeAreBOOST Contest to Camp CURE kickoff dinner in Trenton. WeAreBoost is running a Back2Tap reusable bottle fundraiser to raise money for the contest prizes. One of my fellow speakers was Rein Triefeldt, a solar kinetic sculptor from Trenton. He told us about his collaboration with an elementary school environmental club in Hillsborough, California. Together via iChat technology, he and the students designed a 25-foot grid-connected, energy-producing solar tree for the school yard. Then during the week of Earth Day 2008, they built a maquette (model) of their beautiful California Oak solar tree. They calculate that their solar tree will generate 7,300 kWh – enough power to re-charge 2.500 iPhones and iPod’s every day for a year. That’s something students were especially thrilled to learn! I think the students summed it up best: “Solar trees saving real trees – that’s just too cool!”
Last Saturday I participated in a forum called “Inventing the Future – Rebuilding Communities from the Inside Out” organized by We Are BOOST (Building Open Opportunity Structures Together) in Trenton, NJ. As I navigated my way to the event using the GPS system in my new Toyota Camry hybrid, I found a neighborhood ”in transition” – some of the old houses and buildings were boarded up, but many were cared for and charming. There was a feeling of hope here.
Once inside Planet Havana, the bar/nightclub hosting the all day event, I found the people who embodied that hope. Many of them had known each other for decades. All of them were committed to collaborating to find new solutions to old problems in their under-served Trenton neighborhood. In addition to hope, there was passion – the meeting began with local children aged 5 through 17 years reading their prize-winning poems on peace. Then each forum participant shared what they were doing and fielded questions.
After listening to the stories, I have to admit that the challenges faced in this community and others like it were not at all familiar to me – prolonged unemployment, crime, violence, prejudice, poor self-image, school water with high lead levels, industrial contamination of residential neighborhoods, and the difficulties of re-entering society after prison. All mind-boggling problems, and yet, my message about the wastefulness of bottled water and the importance of drinking tap water from reusable bottles was recieved with great interest and enthusiasm.
Maybe it was because getting Back2Tap is a simple concrete step that anyone can take toward a more sustainable lifestyle. Maybe it was because people who have been exposed to environmental contamination have a greater appreciation for the limitations of our planet and its vulnerability. Maybe it was because having less discretionary income motivates people to be less wasteful. Maybe it was because there is a mindfulness here that is far too uncommon. Maybe it was because of their unflagging hope for better days ahead.
At the end of the forum, over half of the crowd came up to take a brochure and express an interest in running a Back2Tap fundraising campaign with their particular organization or group. As I left, two of my beautiful new-found sisters Amini and Sa Mut gave me warm hugs that I won’t soon forget. As soon as I got back into my car and started for home, I discovered that Planet Havana is less than two blocks from a penitentiary surrounded by towering stone walls topped with huge bales of barbed wire that must serve as a constant reminder of how wrong things can go.
My new hope is that Back2Tap will be able to help these dynamic community organizers raise money, save money, and spread sustainability in their under-served community.
Aren’t you tired of being asked to buy wrapping paper, candy, popcorn, cookie dough, or magnets at your children’s schools? The offerings are often way overpriced, useless, or just plain bad tasting. Last fall, when I was trying to figure out what sort of environmental project to do at my son’s school, the PTO president complained to me about the girl scouts drinking bottled water at their meetings and how great it would be if they would use reusable bottles. It was like a lightening strike in my mind. YES! That is exactly what we need – reusable bottles for everyone! We convinced the PTO to sell stainless steel water bottles school-wide and make it a green fundraiser. Before it was all said and done, it was a town-wide school fundraiser, involving seven schools – the first one of its kind in town. We decided to price the bottles close to retail prices to keep them affordable and still generate some profit for the school. We ended up selling 1500 bottles to a school population of 3500 students and raising over $8000! This was truly something novel: we sold something useful and earth-friendly while raising money for the school. A win – win – win!
