ELIMINATING SINGLE USE PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES

Start-up Boomerang Water purifies water at source in a circular ecosystem recycling glass or aluminum bottles without waste

“When you drink Boomerang water, you are doing your part to help minimize plastic waste, clean up our oceans, and drastically reduce your carbon footprint.. Boomerang Water goes above and beyond just recycling. Our process re-circulates glass and aluminum bottles.” --Jason Dibble and Jerrod Freund, Co-founders, Boomerang

Interview with Jerrod Freund, Co-Founder Boomerang Water

By Suzanne Forcese

WT: Please introduce yourself to our viewers and give us an overview of Boomerang Water.

Freund: Jason Dibble and I are the Co-Founders of Boomerang Water. Boomerang Water developed the world's first, small footprint, point of use, high throughput bottling system that is the size of a commercial ice maker.

The Boomerang Bottling System utilizes aluminum or (patented) glass re-usable bottles.

Our system washes, rinses, sanitizes, fills, caps and seals up to 500 bottles per hour with one operator. 

The system goes at the point of use with the entire purpose to cost effectively replace the need for single use plastic bottles. Boomerang provides the freshest, most sustainable bottle of water you can possibly get. 

Boomerang systems are deployed at hotels and resorts, manufacturing and industrial sites and will someday be found on cruise ships and corporate campuses, medical facilities, military facilities, campuses – whole communities.

WT: What was the journey that led you to found Boomerang?

Freund: While serving 4 tours for the United States Air Force in the Middle East (Afghanistan and Iraq), Jason Dibble came up with the concept driven by the number of plastic bottles of water the military shipped overseas to supply troops with safe drinking water. 

Jason concluded that if water were properly filtered, any local water would have been potable to provide (and perhaps even healthier) if there would be a way to bottle onsite and not in plastic.

Jason and I have been friends for many years. I left the world of corporate finance to fulfil my strong passion to make a positive contribution to the environment. We created Boomerang to eliminate plastic waste and make a positive impact on the world.

WT: What were the drivers that inspired you to create the Boomerang model?

Freund: In the U.S alone 50 billion plastic bottles are thrown away each year, mostly ending up in landfills, waterways and oceans. Every year, plastic bottle waste kills over 1 million seabirds and over 100,000 mammals.

Jason and I both have children. Seeing the devastation that is occurring because of plastic in our oceans; and the fact that it takes hundreds of years for plastic to degrade; knowing there are significant health issues with microplastics; we believed there had to be a better way to preserve our planet for future generations.

The questions we asked -- is there something more sustainable than plastic, and why are we shipping water everywhere? Why aren’t we bottling at the point of use and why aren’t we filtering at that point of use? Nobody was really looking at this.

The journey led us to what we have today... a system that can take in source water and filter it, wash, sanitize, fill, and cap bottles whether glass or aluminum at the point of use and then incorporate that in a true closed loop system.

WT: Our viewers are quite savvy about bottled water. Commercially produced bottled water in most cases is tap water.

Freund: 70% of all bottled water is municipal water. Another point to consider is the amount of fuel it takes to produce one plastic bottle. If you were to take a plastic bottle and fill it one third of the way with diesel fuel -- that shows how much plastic it took to make that bottle.

We go above and beyond, not only do we eliminate single use plastic from every component of our program, but we use substrates that are infinitely recyclable (ie aluminum and glass) and most important, we focus on re-use!

Our system is eliminating the logistics chain in reducing the use of plastic. Our closed loop economy bottles water at any site – hotels, restaurants, universities, hospitals, manufacturing facilites, communities...anywhere.

WT: You are taking source water from any site – how are you transforming that water into safe and fresh water?

Freund: Boomerang uses a mini water treatment plant that utilizes reverse osmosis (which strips EVERYTHING out of the water including all PFAS, PFOS, pharmaceuticals, plastics, all emerging contaminants of concern) and then re-mineralizes the water prior to going into the Boomerang system, adding all the good minerals back in and getting to a perfectly balanced ph. Additionally, the water is run through a carbon filter for polishing as well a UV light to ensure the highest and freshest quality.

WT: How does the Boomerang system work?

Freund: The Boomerang bottling system acts as a dishwasher and bottling plant all in one. The boomerang system holds 48 bottles at a time and processes 6 at a time. The system washes, rinses, sanitizes, fills, caps and seals (utilizing vacuum similar to a snapple cap) up to 500 bottles per hour. The system is semi-automated requiring only one person to operate the system.

WT: Boomerang has received several prestigious awards -- the 2023 Seal Award; 2023 Gold Entrepreneur of the Year Stevie Award; 2023 Finalists for European Packaging's Sustainability Awards; 2023 finalist for the Reuses; and 2022 SXSW Innovation Award. That's impressive for a start-up! What have these recognitions meant for you?

Freund: It's less about the awards or the acknowledgement of our hard work, it’s more about the education and knowledge of consumers that is growing and understanding how bad single use plastic is on the environment (carbon footprint and waste) as well how bad leaching of plastic into water is for the human body.

WT: The Boomerang Water website states “Sustainable Hydration Made Easy”. Please elaborate.

Freund: The initial discussion to start-up of a Boomerang project involves a few months with immediate results. Most sustainability initiatives can take years and require completely new infrastructure.

Ours is a drop in and get going concept. Our equipment is set up in a day. It takes another day to train operators on the system and by day 3 we are eliminating the need for single use plastic water bottles across a campus or a community.

WT: Your clients include several world-class resorts. What impact have you made in that space?

Freund: All our customers have had a desire to eliminate single use plastic from their campus/venues as part of an improved guest experience. Other products that claim sustainability still have the transportation component of shipping water, which as we say, makes no sense.

Boomerang provides an elevated experience by utilizing a very elegant bottle coupled with the best quality and freshest water possible, from production to consumption time is less than 3 days on average. Whereas most bottled water, even sustainably bottled, average duration from production to consumption is 6 months to a year. Additionally, we offer a custom bottle deco program as we have in-house digital printers and can custom deco bottles for our customers.

The biggest impact we make on a location, (in particular our manufacturing locations) is waste reduction and in some instances cost savings.

One of our customers was going through 40,000 single use plastic water bottles per day across ~15,000 employees and contractors. That’s approximately 10 million tons of plastic waste produced per year.

We have begun rolling out Boomerang across this facility and it will eliminate the plastic bottle waste within 6 months, utilizing 4 Boomerang systems, a vending set-up and bottle recovery program. Additionally, it will have a 20% cost reduction to former practice utilizing single use plastic

WT: Tell us about the customers you are serving and are looking to serve.

Freund: Boomerang is very focused on the luxury travel and leisure industry. Most of our customers to date though are the destination – hotels and resorts.

 We’re currently working on eliminating single use plastic from an entire island. As we proliferate our product across various sectors, we absolutely intend to focus on cruise ships, airlines.

WT: Can Boomerang service clients worldwide?

Freund We are able to service the America’s (US, Canada, Mexico, Bahamas and other islands and can even reach into South America). The rest of the world (Europe and Asia in particular) is not yet on our target list more due to operational challenges and logistics. However, we do intend to focus on Europe in the next 12-18 months.

WT: What about the medical industry?

Freund: Hospitals would be a great beneficiary of adopting our program, in particular because of the high quality/health aspects.

In areas that can have flooding, hurricanes, where water boiler advisories can occur, our filtration can make any water potable and healthy. 

We have had discussions with a few hospital systems but have not yet partnered with a hospital. It is high on our priority list.

WT: Many of our First Nations Communities in Canada unfortunately have drinking water issues and plastics landfill issues. Would the Boomerang system be something to resolve these concerns?

Freund 100% for sure! Boomerang would be an excellent system to deploy as it’s mobile, small, requires little operation and maintenance, can convert any water to high quality drinking water. It just takes a community philosophy of reuse as opposed to single use to make it cost effective and successful. 

We believe First Nations communities would be an ideal way to provide high quality drinking water and eliminate all the waste.

WT: Should a First Nation Community want to get on board -- what would you provide? Is any training necessary? How would you/could you customize the service?

Freund: Every system needs to have an operator and someone who can maintain the equipment. Boomerang provides all the support required to do this, from training and education, to equipment, to training of maintenance and operation across the spectrum.

Each of our installations is customized to the specific location. We would need to identify a pilot, work with the community to set-up the program, identify the operators/maintenance and set-up installation and program management.

 Boomerang does not just install equipment and then leave it behind, we are constantly following up and ensuring recovery of the bottle and proper operation and maintenance. As well we monitor our systems remotely and have developed monthly ESG reports that provide productivity results, sustainability results, and more.

WT: Any last comments?

Freund: Together we can eliminate plastic waste.