Choose Life. Choose A Job. Choose A Compostable Water Bottle.
A plastic-less waterbottle is scheduled to make its way onto the market this fall as British scientist James Longcraft completed the production of his environmentally friendly and biodegradable design for Choose Water.
Introduced to the world through his Ingiegogo campaign, Longcraft found the inspiration for the bottle following a trip to Gambia straight after college. There he discovered the limited access to water many communities faced as well as the negative impact it had on the people who lived there. On his return back to the United Kingdom, he felt compelled to produce a social enterprise that supported various water projects in Africa.
By Summer of 2017, Choose Water secured a contract with a food festival where they saw the extreme waste involved in putting on such a production as Longcraft saw thousands of water bottles discarded. It was then that he began in earnest to develop a biodegradable, sustainable, and non-toxic bottle that would replace plastic.
Now, two years later, the bottle is almost ready to enter the world. According to their website, the entire bottle, sans the lid, is compostable in a mere three weeks, a fraction of the time it takes plastic to wither away. The outer casing and label are both made of 100% recycled paper and dyed with eco-inks, while the lining is a sustainably-sourced natural material developed by Longcraft and his team. The lid, on the other hand, is an alloy that will rust and deteriorate over the course of a year.
Can you imagine a world where the single-use bottles do not create a lasting impact on the planet, but still provides the same basic needs and convenience? It's a gamechanger in the world of sustainability, and you can see why Longcraft is skeptical of letting anyone test the bottles until the official release as there’s a fear someone may copy this one-of-a-kind substrate he created.
Considering this supposed wunderkind material, it’s a substrate and technology you almost wish he’d share with the PepsiCo’s and Coca-Cola’s of the world. Or at least patent it. Plus, the whole millions of bottles entering our landfills and waterways thing is kind of a big deal.
