Business practices play an increasingly important role in the preservation of our environment. Individuals can only be expected to take on so much responsibility, and any individual’s impact is limited to their own consumption. Twice the Ice is committed to making positive environmental impacts, and to helping individuals do the same. Here are the ways that Twice the Ice and our customers are making positive impacts on the environment.
Twice the Ice’s Impact on the Environment
Reducing Plastic Waste
Plastic waste has become a big problem. Around the world, humans produce 380 million tons of plastic waste annually. That’s about 95 tons of plastic spread over every square mile of the United States, every single year. And this number is growing. As it grows, the environmental impacts of plastic get worse and worse; killing sea life, creating toxic microplastics, producing pollution, taking up space and more.
It is up to consumers, businesses and governments to make plastic waste reduction a priority. One way to start is by reducing single-use plastic bottles. Twice the Ice water and ice vending machines make it easy to refill water bottles and containers on-the-go. On average, each ice and water vending machine saves about 250,000 bottles per location. That’s about 500 million bottles a year that don’t go into landfills or oceans and don’t consume fossil fuels for production and shipping.
Lowering Carbon Emissions from Transportation
Just about everything we use and consume must, at some point, be transported to us. Ideally, this would be a short trip from a nearby factory or farm, but more often, it’s a long trip, spanning hundreds or thousands of miles. This results in billions of tons of CO2 polluting the atmosphere.
Even a relatively simple item like a bottle of water, which contains only two ingredients—water and the plastic for the bottle—has a long transportation chain behind it, including shipping the raw materials to make the bottle, shipping empty bottles to a bottling plant, and shipping full bottles to stores. Transportation and shipping are among the biggest contributors to carbon emissions, amounting to 1.9 billion tons of CO2 every year in the U.S. alone.
Twice the Ice removes the need for transportation. Our ice and water vending machines provide purified water and ice straight from the local water supply and into customers’ containers.
Reducing Factory Pollution
Manufacturing is another major contributor to environmental degradation and pollution. Creating plastics for plastic bottles and other items involves a number of hazardous processes that produce dangerous byproducts, such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, ozone, sulfur dioxide, and more.
Once Twice the Ice vending machines are made, they can continue to provide purified water and ice for years to come. There’s no need to continually produce plastic bottles to get clean water outside of your home. Simply bring your refillable water bottle or ice container to a Twice the Ice vending machine and fill up.
The first step in protecting and preserving our environment is to make the environment a priority. Taking small steps to reduce plastic pollution and carbon emissions helps to make a big problem smaller, and shows concern for the future. When consumers challenge the status quo with their buying power, businesses have the opportunity and incentive to respond with creative solutions.
