Making Tap Water Cool Again: Will Bottled Water Be the Next Cigarette?

by Paul Shapiro | June 15, 2020 

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Let’s face it: even though we all know there’s a huge problem with single-use plastic bottles, right or wrong, most Americans just don’t trust tap water. Tens of thousands of plastic water bottles are thrown out every minute, with nearly none of them actually being recycled. In fact, thousands of years from now, our plastic waste may be some of the most obvious relics remaining of our civilization. 

But one serial entrepreneur, Rich “Raz” Razgaitis, is trying to make plastic-free tap water cool again, and wants you to think of single-use plastic water bottles as if they were as socially unacceptable as cigarettes. And so far he’s raised $25 million in venture capital to wage his purified tap water crusade.

Raz co-founded FloWater with the goal of placing his water purification machines in thousands of public places, making clean tap water available for free to anyone passing by. FloWater machines are already displacing water bottles in major offices like Red Bull, Microsoft, Airbnb, Google and Target, as well as more than 100 hotels and dozens of school districts and concert venues in all 50 states.

Hear Raz’s inspiring story in this episode, as the FloWater team continues seeking to transform our perceptions of tap water and put an end to single-use plastic water bottles.

Discussed in this episode