FloWater: An Answer To Our Plastic Bottle Woes? (Re-broadcast)

In the 1990s, I recall my grandfather remarking upon the new ubiquity of plastic water bottles, “When did everybody get so thirsty all of a sudden?” Indeed, plastic bottles have been proliferating at an exponential rate since the 1970s – the US alone is responsible for tens of billions of single-use plastic bottle waste every year. This week on Sea Change Radio, we take a look at the bottled water industry through the eyes of a relatively small but innovative player in the space. CEO and co-founder of FloWater, Rich “Raz” Razgaitis, joins us to tell us about his company’s product, its mission to help curb America’s seemingly bottomless thirst for single-use plastic bottles, and the ways the bottled water industry is similar to Big Tobacco. 00:02 Narrator – This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I’m Alex Wise. 00:20 Rich Razgaitis (RR) – The solution is create a product so that bottled water is not a necessity in 99% of the cases, and that’s what we’re focused on is building a new platform and a new way of water that eliminates the need for single use packaged water. 00:36 Narrator – In the 1990s, I recall my grandfather remarking upon the new ubiquity of plastic water bottles, “When did everybody get so thirsty all of a sudden?” Indeed, plastic bottles have been proliferating at an exponential rate since the 1970s – the US alone is responsible for tens of billions of single-use plastic bottle waste every year. This week on Sea Change Radio, we take a look at the bottled water industry through the eyes of a relatively small but innovative player in the space. CEO and co-founder of FloWater, Rich “Raz” Razgaitis, joins us to tell us about his company’s product, its mission to help curb America’s seemingly bottomless thirst for single-use plastic bottles, and the ways the bottled water industry is similar to Big Tobacco. 01:43 Alex Wise (AW) – I’m joined now on Sea Change Radio by Rich “Raz” Razgaitis. He is the CEO and Co-founder of FloWater. Raz, welcome to Sea Change Radio. 01:52 Rich Razgaitis (RR) – Thanks so much. Great to be here, Alex. Appreciate you having me on the show. 01:55 Alex Wise (AW) – So FloWater is a pretty cool idea. Tell us what the company makes, how FloWater Works, and what your company’s mission. 02:04 Rich Razgaitis (RR) – So FloWater is a company that’s fundamentally focused on changing the way that we think of water and specifically drinking water. And that basically is everything from how water is treated, transported and consumed. So if you look at the big problem that we see in the market that we’re solving for single use plastic water bottles. The reason that people are using single use plastic water bottles and I’m sure we’ll talk about some of the stats and the impact of that later. But the reason that people are using them is primarily because they don’t like what’s coming out of their tap water and we don’t have a problem in the US called if I could only find a faucet, we have a problem called. I really don’t like what’s coming out of the faucet or I don’t trust it. And So what FloWater is is a solution to that. And what we’re doing is we’re building a set of water products that tap into, no