Hong Kong, Bluewater and Volvo Ocean Race to give away drinking water during Race stopover in Kai Tak Runway Park and help banish plastic bottle pollution!
Hong Kong, February 19, 2018 — Visitors to Hong Kong’s iconic Kai Tak Runway Park during the visit by the Volvo Ocean Race over the next two weeks will be in for a tasty and healthy surprise. Global water solutions company Bluewater and Volvo Ocean Race have created three unique public hydration stations to provide visitors complimentary drinking water free of contaminants and to help stop the need for environment-unfriendly single-use plastic bottles.
“The Volvo Ocean Race is the largest sailing event on earth that aims to protect ocean health, something we endorse as the Race’s official water provider and Sustainability Partner and contribute towards by providing free access to water as pure as nature intended,” said Anders Jacobson, co-founder and CEO of Blue AB, the company that owns Bluewater. Blue and Bluewater are the brainchild of Swedish environmental entrepreneur Bengt Rittri, who sold his global Blueair air purifying business to Unilever one year ago.
Noting Bluewater has innovated the world’s most advanced water purifiers for home, business and public water distribution uses, Anders (pictured below) said the company is official water provider to the Volvo Ocean Race and a Sustainability Partner as a direct result of its mission to provide access to clean water to people everywhere and help end the scourge of ocean plastic pollution.
“The Volvo Ocean Race is a ‘wow’ event that attracts public interest and media coverage. We want to leverage that to demonstrate how we’ve put sustainability and planetary and human health at the core of our business with water purification solutions based on human ingenuity that address the issue of water quality access and plastics pollution” Anders said.Anders will also be a speaker at the Volvo Ocean Race Ocean Summit in Hong Kong where the worlds of sport, industry, government and science will showcase innovative solutions and announcements to combat the global crisis of ocean plastic pollution.
Anne-Cecile Turner, Sustainability Programme Leader for the Volvo Ocean Race, said: “By supplying clean drinking during the Hong Kong stopover, Bluewater are helping us to reduce the impacts single-use plastic bottles are having on the health of our Oceans. So far, we have avoided the use of 85 000 single-use plastic bottles, during the first three stopovers, by providing free drinking water.
“Through the Ocean Summits and the sustainability measures implemented during Race stopovers we are making a significant impact and leaving a valuable legacy, something that we will continue to do in Hong Kong.”
Bluewater water stations harness patented second-generation SuperiorOsmosis technology that ensures unmatched purification efficiency, operating capacity and service life while delivering up to almost 8,000 liters of water a day from the tap. Bluewater’s technology removes contaminants such as toxic metals, chemicals, micro-plastics, pharmaceutical residues, micro-organisms and other harmful substances and particles down to 0.0001 microns.
Founder Bengt Rittri said Bluewater is reimagining point-of-use water delivery: “Our culture has created a vicious cycle, where, rather than addressing water treatment and infrastructure, we’ve normalized the use of single-use plastic bottled water for much of our water intake, which creates a huge waste stream that further pollutes the compromised water supply.”
Studies show only nine percent of single-use plastic is recycled globally, and a study from Orb Media in the USA found that 93 percent of U.S. tap water contains plastic strands, or micro-plastics. Bengt believes the health of the planet ‘demands imaginative thinking to halt the vast tide of plastic waste that sees over one million plastic bottles being sold every minute and less than nine percent recycled’.
#nosingleuseplastics
For more information, please contact David Noble, head of PR and Communication at david.noble@bluewatergroup.com or on +44 7785 302 694
Bluewater’s full range of water purifiers are available in Hong Kong fromTop Clean House, No.169 Gloucester Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong - Phone: +852 2345 8801Email: patrick@topcleangroup.org