Environment

999Bottle tracks your mitigated environmental impact one water bottle at a time

999Bottle tracks your mitigated environmental impact one water bottle at a time
With its rubberized dial, the 999Bottle tracks your impact
With its rubberized dial, the 999Bottle tracks your impact
View 4 Images
With its rubberized dial, the 999Bottle tracks your impact
1/4
With its rubberized dial, the 999Bottle tracks your impact
The 999Bottle is a 24-oz. (.7 L) stainless steel water bottle
2/4
The 999Bottle is a 24-oz. (.7 L) stainless steel water bottle
The accompanying app translates bottles saved into facts
3/4
The accompanying app translates bottles saved into facts
Twist the dial every time you fill the bottle and you'll know exactly how many disposables you saved over time
4/4
Twist the dial every time you fill the bottle and you'll know exactly how many disposables you saved over time
View gallery - 4 images

We all know that using a stainless steel or polycarbonate water bottle is much more eco than using (and tossing) a disposable water bottle. It's kind of the trendy thing right now. But do you really know just how much garbage and energy that you're saving the Earth from? With the 999Bottle, it's easy to find out.

A simple but practical idea, the 999Bottle is a 24-oz. ( .7 L) stainless steel water bottle with one unique feature: a built-in, rubberized turn-dial that lets you keep track of the number of water bottles you're saving from the landfill. Every time you fill the 999Bottle, you simply turn the dial to tick off one more bottle saved.

The concept might seem almost too simple to warrant an entire product. After all, if you were really interested, you could get the exact same benefit by tracking bottles in your head or on paper. But who actually does that? The 999Bottle provides an instant reminder every time you open the tap or spring, so you actually will keep track.

The accompanying app translates bottles saved into facts
The accompanying app translates bottles saved into facts

Another advantage of the 999Bottle is that it comes with an accompanying iPhone app that puts your numbers into context. From what we've seen, some of the facts are trivial and whimsical (your number of bottles interpreted into how far Knight Rider's K.I.T.T. can turbo-boost the Hoff) and some are more factual (the number of miles you could travel on the oil saved from bottles). Either way, you get a little context and positive reinforcement for using the same water bottle day in and day out. The app also lets you team up with friends to track your collective impact.

The 999Bottle system was conceived as a means of closing the gap between knowledge and action. Plenty of people know that disposable bottles (or disposable anything) are wasteful and environmentally harmful, but a lesser number actually make a concerted effort to cut their usage. By adopting the 999Bottle, people will have more concrete motivation for abandoning disposables.

Artefact, the Seattle-based industrial design firm that conceived the 999Bottle, is currently trying to drum up funding on Kickstarter. Because it's a design firm, Artefact doesn't have manufacturing capabilities and is trying to get the funding needed to turn the bottle from smart design to market product.

Source: Kickstarter via Gear Hungry

View gallery - 4 images
11 comments
11 comments
jonoxn
I thought the point of 'bottled' water is to avoid drinking untrusted tap water? I personally buy bottled water for the bottle. After many many refills from the tap it eventually ends up in the recycle bin.
jaqen
@jonoxn: Where i come from (Denmark, but the same goes for much of europe) the rules regarding tap water is stricter than the rules regarding bottled water, in terms of allowed bacteria count and such, so you are better off drinking tap water :-)
often bottled water is just bottled tap water, so you are just paying for a container and a brand name, plus distribution
Tiainen Arttu
If you are reading Gizmag there is a quite high probability that you are living in area where you don't need to worry about tap water. The main feature of this product is simply showing of how eco-trendy you are to your hipster friends, but if it keeps a few bottles out of landfills, I am the last person to complain.
wle
is it just me or does that seem like the dumbest thing ever?
[[ignoring the constant stream of bicycle 'improvements' by 'artists' and 'industrial designers']]
wle
superfluid
jaqen--you are absolutely right. The same is true in the US. Bottled water is not regulated like tap water and as such can have all manner of undesirable contents that people dont even realize are present.
If you think about it, reliable access to clean water is one of the key pillars of modern society and civilization. Therefore, companies that sell bottled water are seeking to undermine this pillar and are, by definition, seeking to move modern civilization backwards. It's disgusting on so many levels.
Ct
WLE- I agree! This is just a dumb invention. After a week the users will stop counting as the fun factor has worn off and they realize it's just meaningless task.
MasterG
I live in third world south africa and we have some of the purest cleanest tap water on earth. What do you need bottled water for? Just create some jobs and clean up your water. I try to be an econut but we dont recycle plastic very much here we do recycle aluminum cans though and many (i mean hundreds) of poor destitute homeless people get up before the crack of dawn to rummage though your garbage looking for your soda cans. I have even used 20 x 2ltr plastic water filled coke bottles to move a safe (1000kg EMPTY!) egyptian style. This product is for posers THERE are hungry people out there!
Gadgeteer
I don't really care how many bottles I supposedly save. I use my Rubbermaid Refill Reuse bottle every day, filling it from my filter pitcher. Counting is meaningless.
As for bottled water, you really don't know where it comes from. Some of it actually is tap water. Others have been proven to have higher bacterial count than tap since there's no chlorination to kill bacteria. All of it is wasteful, needing way too many resources not just to make the bottles, but gasoline to transport all that water by truck. Water is quite heavy.
Demian Alcazar
Every EcoNazi out there will want one of these and they'll start taking pictures of their bottles and putting them up on facebook so they can be smug about how much plastic they've stopped using.
Smugstagram! If I ever see anyone carrying one these bottles I'll know I never want to talk to them.
Bill Bennett
bottled water= profits for coca cola, pepsico yadda, bottled water is a pox on this planet, they bottle tap water and sell what costs them 10 cents for over 100 cents, i watch people buy cases of bottled water, disgusted by their ignorance. Buy a filter for your home if you are that worried - why fill the landfill with petroleum based bottles?
Load More