Green Tip #27: Only Drink Water on the First Floor

Ahh... it's so nice to be able to share this Green Tip with all of you in a print form again. So, let's get back into it. You're probably looking at this title and thinking, "what?? I took all that time and effort to re-learn how to read, and I get this weird Green Tip?" But yes, you are reading that title right and I should probably explain.

So, imagine this situation: you work on the 40th floor of a skyscraper and you're hard at work counting widgets or whatever you happen to be doing for a living. Well, you're working hard and you decide that you need to take a break. So you head over to the break room and you fill the coffee pot with water. First of all, let me just yell at you for wanting to use a coffee pot. When you get the time, check out the wattage of one of those monsters. They're extremely 'brown' appliances. (ha, a coffee joke!) But coffee makers are a different story. I'm here to yell at you about water use.

How do you think that the water makes its way up all those floors to the 40th floor? Yup, it has to be pumped by a pump, somewhere in a water distribution plant in your city. And that uses energy to do that. So what is the solution? I mean you can't just not drink water if you live above the first floor.

Well, you could just bring your own water bottles, right? Wrong! I'm sure you know how bad water bottles are for the environment. All that wasted energy and resources to make and recycle all those bottles. Okay, so maybe you can just walk down 39 floors to use the drinking fountain. Hm... 78 floors of stairs for a drink of water? I don't think so...

So the only solution I can think of is to use a CamelBak at work. And I've heard that they go very well with suits, in case that's how you have to dress for your job. Think about it, you can start a brand new trend in your office!