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TheBuzz
Erika Engle
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Water drinkers saving the planet one sip at a time
Savvy water drinkers have long known that bottled water is often little more than municipal tap water that may or may not have been processed in some way.
Brand Strategy Group principals Gloria Garvey and Brook Gramann were tossing around the idea of selling bottled Hawaiian tap water as a joke, and registered the trade name Hawaiian Tap and an Internet domain in 2003.
It was to be a "riff on all those stupid bottled waters," besides, everybody knows "Hawaiian tap water is the best," Garvey said.
They didn't do anything else with it -- until now, because almost nobody is laughing about bottled water anymore.
The ladies' research shows it takes 47 million gallons of oil a year to make plastic water bottles for American consumers.
"Eliminating those bottles would be like taking 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere," they wrote, at www.hawaiiantap.com.
Also, there are "gazillions of plastic containers that litter our streets and use up precious space ... in landfills," the site says.
The information changed Garvey's and Gramann's mindset about Hawaiian Tap.
They designed a one-liter, green aluminum bottle, meant to be filled at your favorite faucet, placed in the fridge overnight and taken with you in the morning.
"Bottle your own," they say, and the Hawaiian Tap bottle can serve as a "badge" to show others the bearer isn't buying into bottled water.
The bottles are sold online and at Lanikai Bath and Body in Kailua, opened by the marketing mavens in October of 2005 to sell their lines of Maui-made lotions, potions and other pampering products.
The bottle is $18.50, but a portion of sales will be donated for preservation and maintenance of Kawai Nui Marsh, the state's largest wetland, Garvey said.
The business briefly expanded with a kiosk in the Nordstrom wing of Ala Moana Center, but the outdoor heat was bad for the products, so it closed.
Lanikai Bath and Body will soon move from its 500 square feet at 767 Kailua Road to Kailua Shopping Center.
It will close around the end of this month and reopen in the first two weeks of May, Garvey said.
Its new spot is the 800 square feet vacated by the recently relocated Morning Brew, "so we'll have more shelf space for our wonderful products and stuff."
That stuff will include prints of the Doug Peebles photo of the Mokuluas that hangs in the shop, which many customers have wanted to buy.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin. Call 529-4747, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210, Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached at:
eengle@starbulletin.com