Mia Grace VO

The speaker asks their friend to order water bottles for an upcoming all-company meeting. They mention the importance of health and sustainability and suggest ordering 1,000 water bottles within a $500 budget. The friend then talks to Valerie, who explains the concept of a product's life cycle and how water bottles can be recycled into various items. The friend decides not to order water bottles and instead considers reusable glass cups. They mention the importance of longer life cycles for sustainability. The speaker is pleased with the decision and thanks their friend for learning about water bottles and their life cycles. Hi, how was your weekend? Hey, listen, we have the all-company meeting coming up in a few weeks, and you're just the person to order what we need. It's going to be an all-day event, so you know what we need to keep the people hydrated and feeling fresh, right? Come on. You know at our company, we're all about health and sustainability. For us, it's got to be the healthiest drink around, the thing that sustains us. Water. I think at our all-team meeting last month, we went through something like 800 water bottles. Can you believe that? I think to be safe, let's order 1,000 for next Friday. We don't want anyone to be thirsty. Your budget is $500. I know it's not ideal, but budgets are tight right now. Think you can do it? I like your thinking. We recycled those bottles, but I have no idea where they are now. Maybe we can reuse them. I wouldn't know. But you should talk to Valerie. She's in charge of facilities here and knows a lot about recycling. Hi, how's your project going? How's your project going? The water bottles from the last big meeting? Oh, I recycled them after the meeting, so you can't reuse them. They're on the next part of their life cycle now. Actually, they're probably in China by now. Sure, a water bottle's not alive. It's a metaphorical term. Life cycle. The steps a product takes from being created and sold to what happens after we're done with it. Reclaimers in China and other countries buy our recycled plastic. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Reclaimers in China and other countries buy our recycled plastic in bulk. They chop it up into teeny tiny pellets, which they use to create new stuff. Water bottles are recycled into a ton of things. Often, water bottle plastic is recycled into fibrous fabric. There's actually something in this very room that's made out of old water bottles. Think you can find it? So you see, I can't give you our old water bottles from last month's meeting. They've been turned into new non-water bottle things like backpacks and cubicle carpet. Or they're in China, being turned into that stuff now. Or even more likely, nobody from China bought our recycling, and they ended up in a landfill, where they're sitting for hundreds of years, unleaching plastic toxins into the soil and groundwater, or being eaten by animals. Ugh. This company claims to care about sustainability, but sometimes we put budget first. I hope you go for a solution that's actually sustainable. Either way, thanks for meeting with me. I enjoyed it. Welcome to Everything But the Kitchen Sink, the water container website with the best online customer service. How can I help you? Sounds good. I recommend our best value and most popular option, the standard water bottle. This will easily fit your budget. Have any questions for me? Wow, I really get to show off my training today. Our water bottle offerings are all made of PET, which stands for polyethylene terephthalate. PET comes from natural gas and petroleum. I wish I could say PET was renewable, but it isn't. We can easily run out of natural gas and petroleum, which are fossil fuels. They come from geological formations that basically take forever to be created. We could potentially run out of them by using them all up, and we can't exactly plant more. So PET is a non-renewable resource. One thing is renewable when we use it at pretty much the same rate as we replenish it. Does that help? So, do you think you'll go with these standard water bottles? I'm glad you asked. We do have this glass cup on offering. It's more expensive, but it can be reused countless times. That means it has a longer life cycle than the water bottles, which typically our customers only use once each. Items with longer life cycles are more sustainable, because they're disposed of less frequently, and you don't need to buy as many. Wait! Are you going to order the water bottles? I just read an article saying water bottles are not sustainable, which is a huge no-go for our company's values and reputation. Do you mind doing a bit more research and maybe finding a better solution for our company? Wait! Are you going to order a bunch of expensive cups? Those are way outside of our agreed-upon budget. Makes sense, but I have a question for you. One of the reasons you gave had to do with a life cycle? I'm not familiar with that term. Could you explain that to me? Sounds like you made a great decision. I'm glad to go with the cups. Thanks for learning so much about water bottles and their life cycles.