Join the Reusolution: A Green Fundraiser that Makes a Difference

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!

FACT: Most water bottles are not recycled; they are dumped in landfills!

It is commonly believed that most disposable plastic water bottles are recycled and reused.   In fact, close to 80% of used water bottles end up in the trash that piles up in our landfills.  By switching from bottled water to tap water, we can help reduce the number of plastic bottles that get tossed into the trash.   On average, there are 137 million plastic bottles that get thrown into the trash every day.   That is enough, laid end to end to reach China and back. 

Back2Tap makes it easier to turn away from bottled water with their stainless steel reusable water bottles.   Consider the number of water bottles that you have used in your life until this point.   Now consider how many more water bottles you have the potential to use throughout the rest of your life.   With the help of a stainless steel reusable water bottle, you can eliminate 100% of your future disposable plastic water bottle usage and do your part in helping rid the environment of the millions of plastic bottles that are dumped in our landfills every day.

No Child Left Inside?

I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, I spent a lot of time outdoors – playing with neighborhood kids, galloping around pretending to be a wild horse, and mixing mud pies for my mom.   Good times spent outside make up the fabric of my happy childhood memories.  

As a mother in the suburbs, I have been pretty good at getting my own kids to spend time outside.  Often when I describe where I live, people will say – I know the house – your kids are always playing outside!    It’s pretty sad that such a thing is noteworthy.   The main reason they happily spent so much time outside is that I often spent time playing outside with them and because I did not let them use high tech devices like ipods, video games, computer games, or cell phones.  Now that they are in middle school and I am working more, most of those high tech bans have gone by the wayside.  Now my kids rarely go outside by choice, and I see firsthand how addicting and limiting these devices really are.  

Given this experience, I was especially interested to read about the  No Child Left Inside (NCLI) movement in a letter to the editor of the New York Times written by Jack Reed, senator from Rhode Island.  The NCLI Coalition is made up of over 1300 member organizations.    On Earth Day this year, Reed introduced a bill in the Senate supporting hands-on environmental education.    This sounds like a good thing.   My company Back2Tap is committed to fostering environmental education in schools and offers free educational materials on-line, regardless of whether schools order our stainless steel bottles.

According to Richard Louv’s book “Last Child in the Woods,” the health of the planet is at stake, in addition to the health of our kids.    If kids grow up with “nature deficit disorder”, why would they care about saving the planet as adults?  Nicholas Kristof’s recent New York Times Op-Ed entitled: “How to Lick a Slug” suggests that we let our kids learn about nature first hand, by spending time outdoors.

I’m wondering if any lasting childhood memories could be generated by playing another round of video games or exchanging inane text messages with friends.