CanO Water brand, a UK company came up with an idea four years ago to replace single-use plastic water bottles and help stop ocean pollution. CanO Water claims that their aluminum product is “infinitely recyclable” and as the company states, recycle your can and it will be back on the shelf in as little as 6 weeks.
They are now ready to launch their product in Singapore, set for release around Christmas. CanO Water will be carried by the upmarket supermarket chain Cold Storage, online retailer RedMart, the salad bar SaladStop!, a healthy snack vending machine operator Boxgreen, and an unnamed large hotel chain with 11 branches that will replace plastic water bottles in their rooms.
The company will offer both natural and sparkling spring water, which will be available in two can varieties. One will be with a pull tab for drinking the entire can. The second can option will come with a resealable lid. The cans with the resealable lid can be recycled the same way by the consumer and once they enter a recycling factory, they will be used for waste generation or incinerated.
David Ward is the founder and managing director of The Nurturing Company, who represents the CanO Water brand said:Â “Aluminium is the closest thing to a closed-loop material available on the market.”
Aluminum is highly recycled compared to plastics. It is said that nearly three 75% of all aluminum ever produced has been recycled, compared to just 9% of all plastics.
When asked about the plastic caps on the resealable cans, Ward explained, they plan on separating them in the facility or they will be burned off during the aluminum shredding and smelting process.
The water used for the canning is sourced from the European Alps and shipped to Singapore. Ward talks about the carbon footprint; “It’s not a perfect world. In a year’s time, we hope to have identified an aquifer spring we can work with within Asia. But it has to be close to a seaport.”
He also mentioned that most water brands in Singapore sell bottled water through the process of reverse osmosis, which is essentially the same as filtered tap water. The two exceptions he mentioned were Evian and Ice Mountain.
Target Market
Our target market is anyone who buys plastic packaged water. I drink water using a refillable container every day, but the reality is I’m in the minority. We want to reduce one-time-use plastic wherever we can, and Singapore is a country that needs to see plastic reduction happen, he said.
On average hotels in Singapore give away 500,000 single-use plastic water bottles every year. They claim this is partially due to the tropical climate.
“Hotel brands are making grandiose promises about reducing single-use plastic, but they’re not the ones who have to put these promises into play—it’s the franchise owners, who have to deliver on these promises.”
“It’s not easy. There’s always a to-and-fro between the supplier, the hotel’s procurement department, and the sustainability department. But in some hotels, plastic bottled water has already become a point of friction. Customers are asking why they have got plastic bottled water in their rooms? Most guests won’t accept it in the future,” he said.
Hopefully, this will work out and other hotels will take notice not only in Singapore but around the world. CanO Water is already available at more than 500 locations worldwide, to find out more you can visit their website at canowater.com
