Make your Drinking Water Station Eco Friendly

Last week, one of our Twitter followers asked us,

HELP! Trying to set up drinking water station in my clinic that is enviro friendly, but too late to change plumbing. Ideas?

which inspired us to publish these ways to make your drinking water station more eco friendly, whether they are fill-your-cup, or fountain-style.

Drinking Fountain Stations

Most recognized as the way most schools provide water for their students, drinking water fountains have been around for decades but contain one fatal flaw – the amount of perfectly good water that gets poured down the drain in the process.

The Solution: Implement a gray water system with your drinking water fountain.

What’s Gray Water?

Gray Water is recycling waste water, and using it in other areas that don’t rely on entirely clean water. In typical gray water systems, leftover water from bathing, laundry, or dishwashing, could be re-used for irrigation. However, a gray water system could be implemented into a drinking water fountain, which would store any water which is washed down the drain for later use in toilet systems, so that clean water isn’t used to fill the tanks and flush.

In most cases, the amount of water captured in the gray water system from a drinking fountain alone won’t be enough to meet the demand of a toilet system in a building, but it can still make a difference.

Drinking Cup Water Stations

But what if you’re using a drinking cup system and the amount of water being washed down the drain is too insignificant to consider a gray water system? It’s time to consider biodegradable drinking cups.

Biodegradable drinking cups

Although most office buildings provide disposable paper cups for their employees and guests to drink out of, these end up in a landfill after a single use, and are a terrible choice for anyone looking to be more eco friendly. Alternatively, you could offer reusable glass or plastic cups – but they have to be washed after each use, and the amount of water required to keep them clean (depending on how often they’re used) may defeat the purpose of saving water.

That’s where biodegradable drinking cups come in. Look no further than a site like Eco Products to find a simple way to buy small-size biodegradable drinking cups (made entirely from corn) in bulk, making certain that the water your guests drink has the smallest environmental footprint as possible.

Water is one of the essential sources of life, and one that everyone should have access to – but try and keep the environment in mind when setting up your drinking water station. We hope these tips help!