I think this is a genius idea if it's free to the consumer. Why not have the business pay a monthly fee to have the unit installed in their store. The selling point is that it will drive traffic to their business and the people filling their water bottles will most likely buy something in the store? You could also charge consumer $49 for bottle (most high end reusable bottles cost this much) with your Bluetooth tech (rather than app) then works with your filling stations.
@talantorriero Thanks for the feedback! The host businesses do like the increased foot traffic, free advertising on our app and website, and our mission of reducing plastic waste. Host businesses are also able to provide discounts to Reefill members via the app as they're filling up. Imagine getting 15% off a coffee at your local bakery as you're refilling with cold, filtered water -- you can earn back that $1.99 monthly fee, which is less than the cost of just one bottled water, pretty quickly.
So pay to get something you get for free anyways....? I get it if you worked with the city to provide this service for free and place it in every coffee shops or even if needed, charge one time for a re-usable bottle to subset the cost of installation. But this is a bit too much to sell tap water.
@iamshipon1988 Amazingly, nearly 50% of bottled water on the market is nothing more than filtered tap water, including Aquafina and Dasani. So when people spend $2, $3 or $4 on a bottled water they're really paying for the wasteful manufacture and transportation of the bottles, 80% of which go unrecycled resulting in 2 million tons of plastic bottles being dumped in our landfills and oceans every year. Our goal is to stop all of that waste. The $1.99 monthly fee, less than the cost of a single bottled water, is for the infrastructure and chilling and filtering, but not for the water itself -- you can take as much as you want and even fill your friends' bottles.
@patrick_connorton Ah didn't realize it was a monthly fee, rather a fee per refill. That's good to know.
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This service seems very silly on the surface. However, it has much more utility than you might realize.
I drink an average of 8 liters of water every day. I've been doing this using Platypus water bottles for about 5 years. When I'm at home, access to cold, fresh water is just a few steps away at all times. When I'm not at home though, filling up a water bottle with cold, fresh water is remarkably difficult. In fact, finding a place to get cold, fresh water is usually impossible without making a purchase from a bar or restaurant. Even then, the faces waiters and bartenders make at you when you ask them to fill your water bottle are unappreciated. Simply put, very few people in public want anything to do with helping you refill your water bottles and municipal governments don't give two hoots about providing their citizens with access to water.
Reefill could be an extremely helpful service to get cold, fresh water while I'm on the go. It would save me from having to pack a couple liters of water in a backpack any time I go out for an extended period of time.
@magnuson 8 liters of water, seriously? You know that overhydration can have serious side effect like kidney failure, liver problems or water intoxication? http://www.healthline.com/health...
Hi everyone! I'm one of the co-founders of Reefill, a low-cost, eco-friendly bottled water alternative. Our goal is to eliminate the 50 billion plastic water bottles Americans consume each year! Reefill provides unlimited access to cold, filtered tap water through a network of stations in stores across NYC and beyond for just $1.99/month -- that's less than the cost of one bottled water. The monthly fee covers the infrastructure and chilling and filtering, but is not for the water itself -- members can take as much as they want and even fill their friend's bottles! And with each fill, safe water is provided to someone in the developing world through Water.org.
How does it work? Using the Reefill app, members locate the nearest station, activate it with their phone's Bluetooth, and fill their bottle in seconds. Members can track how many bottles they've saved from the landfill and how much money they're saving by avoiding buying bottled water.
Late last year, Reefill launched an eight-station pilot network around NYU, which provided grant funding, and Reefill is getting ready to expand throughout Manhattan and beyond. In fact, we've already met our initial goal on Indiegogo, which will put Reefill stations in nearly every neighborhood in Manhattan:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projec...
Let us know what you think -- we'd love to get your feedback!
Patrick
I just don't get it. If the point is that people use too many plastic water bottles, why don't you just encourage people to jus reuse the bottles? Why does a new tap have to be invented, and yet another app to track something?
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@patrick_connorton what if you were to deploy these in large corporate offices and change your business model to price based on number of employees? Currently, most corporate offices have the large plastic water bottles which need to be loaded on to the dispenser. Once they finish, someone needs to offload the old one and load a new one (which by the way are fairly heavy).
In this model, you are still delivering filtered water to the end-user and reducing the use of plastic (albeit not as much volume as you would targeting the one-use plastic bottles) and potentially cutting costs for the employer.
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While I get maintenance requires some amount of money, I’m not sure how I feel about a separate tier of water fountains in NYC—especially when there’s no qualitative difference between what Reefill is providing and what you get from the tap.
@girma We love NYC's current water fountains and we're just adding to the options! Those fountains are largely in parks and playgrounds because it can be impractical and cost-prohibitive to install them in the densest parts of town. Unfortunately, they also have to be off six months a year to avoid freezing and pose maintenance and sanitation issues. This helps explain why New Yorkers still buy millions of bottled waters every week. Reefill is a natural complement to NYC's fountains, since they help fill in the gaps in the City's water coverage, helping more people ditch bottled water. Reefill stations also dispense ice cold, filtered water, have a UV sanitizing light the kills germs and bacteria in the dispensing area, and are housed in well-maintained stores and cleaned regularly.
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