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Below is our recent interview with Todd Player, CTO and Co-Founder of Instream Water:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Instream Water?
A: InStream Water is revolutionizing the bottled water industry by providing consumers with an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional bottled water. We are building a network of smart, connected water bottle refill stations across the country that will dispense ambient, chilled, and sparkling water, for 1, 2, and 3 cents per ounce. By using a reusable water bottle, we hope to make a big impact on the number of single use plastic water bottles discarded in the United States every year.
Q: How exactly does it work?
A: Our patent pending technology uses NFC tags embedded in a smart silicone band or a boot that is placed on a reusable water bottle to create what we call an Effortless Transaction Feature. The tag is used to store some basic customer information, such as balance and preferred water type, so that when a consumer visits the refill station, the tag is scanned and the refill station will recognize the customer and dispense their water without the consumer needing to do anything else. Bottles are connected to a customer’s account using our apps, where you can add credit to your account, set or change your preferred type and amount of water, and even track your water consumption over time. Our system is fully IoT and cloud connected, giving us real time end to end connectivity over our entire network, uses machine learning algorithms to monitor refill station performance and provides predictive maintenance notifications for issues like carbon charcoal filter replacement.
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Q: What’s the problem with plastic water bottles?
A: The problem with plastic water bottles is they are used once and 80% are never recycled, with 38 billion bottles ending up in landfills, oceans, or just as piles of trash on the roadside. Not only that, but the manufacturing process of single use bottles wastes a tremendous amount of water. Most people don’t know that it takes 3 times the amount of water to manufacture a plastic water bottle than the amount of water actually contained in the bottle, or that plastic water bottle manufacturing consumes 17 million barrels of oil each year. In addition, recent research has found many major brands of bottled water are contaminated with microplastics, tiny particles of polypropylene, nylon and polyethylene terephthalate that are ingested when you drink them.
Q: What is the difference between the smart bottle and the smart band?
A: The smart bottle is an InStream Water branded premium stainless steel vacuum insulated water bottle with a silicone boot that is attached to the base of bottle. The NFC microchip that contains a small amount of encrypted customer information, such as a unique identifier that allows the system to recognize you, and what type and amount of water is your preferred choice is embedded in the boot. The smart band is essentially the same thing but in the form of a type of wrist band that can be slid onto any reusable bottle. The smart band allows people to use any water bottle of their choosing.
Q: What are the benefits of hosting an Instream Water refill station?
A: There are multiple benefits to sites that host a refill station. First and foremost is the impact you have on reducing plastic waste from the waste stream. In a recent beta test we conducted at a small manufacturing facility in Denver, Colorado, a group of about 60 people saved about 1,000 plastic water bottles in just under 2 weeks. Imagine the impact on plastic water bottles for a location that had 1,000 or 2,000 regular users. Second, there is a big emphasis in our country today around healthy lifestyle choices, and beverage selection is certainly part of that discussion. With strategically placed refill stations, a host site can have a positive impact on a variety of health-related concerns by encouraging more water consumption as a healthy alternative. And last but not least is that our business model includes a revenue share for a host site.
Q: What are the costs for hosting a refill station?
A: There is no cost for a host site. We will provide the refill station at no cost, we will pay the installation costs, and we will maintain the refill station. As an option, some employers may wish to sponsor a refill station and provide credits for employees to dispense water, but that is not a requirement and something an organization might choose to do as an employee benefit.
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Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: We are currently in the process of completing a full controlled pilot to gather usage data and evaluate our technology. Once that is completed, in 2019 we expect to begin rolling out refill stations to various host sites. We are currently actively seeking to build our network of refill stations and looking for host sites to partner with.
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