Adam Cooper
May 14, 2012
The Age
REMEMBER when many of us vowed we’d never buy water in a plastic bottle?
What was once considered a fad is now a massive industry, as Australians spend more than $500 million every year on bottled water, which comes out of a tap at the cost of barely a few cents per litre.
On top of that, the environmental impact of discarded bottles is immense. The Total Environment Centre estimates that of the 6.67 billion plastic containers Australians drink their way through every year, only one-third are recycled. The rest are landfill or litter. Environmental advocacy group Do Something estimates it takes between 1.3 and three litres of water to make one litre of bottled water.
For entrepreneur Simon Karlik, who began selling his Cheeki stainless steel drink bottles three years ago in a bid to reduce reliance on plastic bottles, the idea of drinking water from a disposable container is self-indulgent.
”For marine life it’s awful – rangers are always opening up birds and fish who have ingested 80 per cent plastic and 20 per cent food stuffs,” he says.
”Then there’s a selfishness about it. A plastic bottle requires about a third of that bottle in natural petroleum that’s been forming for 100 million years, and when we make this plastic bottle we incur all the energy and environmental impacts of shipping it around the joint and refrigerating it.
”Then we drink it for 30 seconds and chuck it out and it takes about 300 years to then break down.”
As a former outdoor educator and guide with World Expeditions, Mr Karlik is well aware of the impact plastics and other litter can have on pristine wilderness areas. But the inspiration to set up Cheeki with business partners Larry and Robyne Dimant struck him in a more urban setting.
”If you hang out on a Sunday morning in a popular part of Sydney, the garbage bins are overflowing with plastic bottles and coffee cups,” he says.
”I looked into it and found 2.7 million coffee cups are consumed every day in Australia. They are paper but have plastic coating and a plastic lid and I thought ‘this is just hideous’.
”Then I became aware of the health issues with plastic bottles … with BPA [a potentially hazardous chemical] and the leaking of toxins into the water.
”I’d come back from two years living in New Zealand and was looking for a new [business] opportunity and thought let’s build a brand of reusable stuff that’s better for the world – that was the primary motivation. It’s also better for your health and I thought let’s make it colourful and fun and a bit groovy’.”
Cheeki bottles and coffee cups are now sold in 2000 stores across Australia and the US, with plans to make them available throughout the UK.
Mr Karlik hopes his products catch off to the point where people will have their cup filled at the coffee shop near their workplace, and refill their bottle from the tap at work because drinking from stainless steel tastes better than from plastic.
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