How Much is Bottled Water Delivery Costing Your Business?

This may come as a shock, but did you know that about 45% of the world’s bottled water comes from municipal water supply systems? This source is  better known as “tap water.” That’s right, major bottled water companies get about 55% of their supply from spring water but the rest is essentially tap water that’s treated in their plants and filtration systems. The funny thing (or not so funny) is the price consumers pay for bottled tap water vs. filtering it themselves.

Bottled water delivery service vs. bottleless water cooler rental

Water bottle delivery has been a service in the U.S. for a little over 100 years. Imagine all of those billions of dollars thrown away on plastic water bottles as the years passed. According to our Cost Comparison Calculator, the average premium bottled water service costs about $7,477, bottle delivery costs about $4,273, recurring delivery of 5-gallon bottles is about $3,919, and bottled water cooler rental is $3,422. 

Now, let’s compare this to using the municipal water supply, or tap water, by using a bottleless water cooler:

Financial cost

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that tap water costs just over $2 per 1,000 gallons to deliver to people. The agency does mention that larger systems tend to cost less and smaller systems probably cost more. So if you double that cost to be safe we’re looking at $4 per 1,000 gallons of tap water. That’s four-tenths of a cent per gallon. Compare that to bottled water at $1.17 per gallon.

Bottled water is 30,250% more expensive than tap water. That’s starting to sound costly, isn’t it?

The EPA estimates that Americans, on average, use 300 gallons of tap water per day. This amounts to about 36,500 gallons per year which comes to an annual water bill of about $146 per person for tap water. If all of that tap water used each day came from bottled water, the average person’s water bill would be $44,165 per year

Now let’s get back to discussing the offices that are using bottled water delivery services. If they switched all their water consumption over to tap water, their water cost would drop from roughly 1.6 billion dollars per year to a measly 3.96 million dollars per year. And remember, these numbers are the total cost among all businesses and residences in the U.S. using bottled water delivery services.

Environmental cost

Consider that the information that’s laid out above is just the cost-benefit of switching to tap water. If you take into account the environmental impact of plastic bottles as well, there’s a strong case for why workplaces should use filtered tap water instead of a plastic bottled water delivery service. 

Switching from single-use bottled water delivery services to bottleless water coolers for your workplace can help your business eliminate plastic waste and conserve H2O. Here’s how: 

Bottleless water coolers…

• Tap into your existing water supply, so you only use the water that you need, when you’re actually ready to drink it 
• Save up to 140 million kilowatt hours of electricity
• Conserve 6 million gallons of fuel
• Keep 70 million pounds of plastic waste out of landfills (and out of our planet’s oceans and rivers)
• Save millions of gallons of water

By using one of our Culligan Quench standard filtered water coolers, you can keep about 75 employees hydrated and replace the need for about 650 5-gallon plastic water jugs per year. With Culligan Quench bottleless water coolers, you can make a huge difference, both for your company’s well-being and for the environment. 

Switch to better water with Culligan Quench

If your workplace switched to using filtered tap water instead, you could lower your water bill and carbon footprint significantly. According to Culligan Quench’s Cost Comparison Calculator, bottleless water cooler rentals cost about $542, and a bottleless water cooler purchase is $1,410. That’s a huge price difference from the few thousand dollars that jug and bottle delivery costs. 

Unlike water jugs, bottleless water coolers are also filtered, which is an important factor for the health of every single person in your workplace. Reusing old plastic bottles or having stale, unused water sit in a 5-gallon plastic bottle can lead to bacteria growth and water-borne illnesses. To avoid this, Culligan Quench uses a 5-step water filtration process for better drinking water called quenchWATER+ that filters sediments, contaminants, and bad tastes. 

On top of being affordable and safer, Culligan Quench offers various hydration products for your employees to enjoy, including:

• Bottleless water coolers: Receive hot, cold, and water by activating our motion sensor dispensers that work for workplaces of all sizes.
• Ice machines: Get cleaner, better-tasting ice with the touch of a button or by motion activation.
• Sparkling dispensers: If you’re hoping to wow your employees, give them options when it comes to their hydration needs. Culligan Quench offers machines that deliver both still and sparkling water.
• Coffee: Choose from thermal brewers, single-cup pods, or Keurig® single-cup brewers. And when you order your coffee supplies from Culligan Quench, you can rent your Culligan Quench coffee brewer for no additional cost!

When you’re a business looking at your overhead cost, make sure you take a peek at your water delivery bill and see if you can make the switch over to a bottleless water cooler from Culligan Quench. This change could have a positive impact on your water bill, employee health, and environmental impact. 

Contact Culligan Quench today to get a free quote!