Large cooler bottles and single-use bottles aren’t the same thing
It’s easy to lump all plastic water bottles together, but the comparison doesn’t hold up. A single-use 500ml bottle is used once and thrown away. A returnable cooler bottle is collected, cleaned, and refilled many times over its working life before it eventually reaches end of life and is recycled. The plastic-reduction opportunity with a bottled cooler isn’t switching away from it, it’s making sure that reuse cycle is actually working as intended.
Where does plastic waste actually happen around a water cooler?
Waste tends to creep in around the edges of a bottled water setup rather than from the core bottle itself:
- Disposable cups used at the cooler instead of reusable mugs or bottles
- Over-ordering bottles that then sit unused or go past their best
- Damaged or lost bottles that don’t make it back into the return cycle
- Individual small bottled water brought in alongside the cooler rather than instead of it
Reduce, then reuse, then recycle
The most effective order to tackle plastic waste is prevention first, then keeping what you already have in circulation, and recycling as the last step rather than the first line of defence.
- Keep returnable bottles circulating.
The biggest lever you have is making sure empty bottles actually get returned rather than left in a cupboard or binned. A simple, visible collection point near the cooler helps.
- Cut unnecessary disposable cups.
Switching to reusable mugs and bottles at the cooler removes one of the most avoidable sources of waste in an office.
- Make reusable drinking bottles the default.
Encouraging staff to keep a personal bottle at their desk reduces both cups and the temptation to bring in individually packaged water.
- Get your ordering right.
Base your bottle order on actual usage rather than a round number. Over-ordering leads to bottles sitting too long and being wasted.
- Set up a clear return process.
Culligan collects empty bottles as standard on every scheduled delivery – see our bottled water delivery page for how scheduling works.
- Recycle what’s left properly.
Where plastic genuinely can’t be avoided or reused, recycle it correctly. For workplaces in England, current rules require dry recyclables, including plastic, to be separated from general waste before collection.
When a high-demand area might suit mains-fed instead
If a particular area of your workplace has continuous, high-volume demand, a mains-fed water cooler removes bottle logistics entirely from that location by connecting directly to your existing water supply. This isn’t an either/or decision across your whole site, because many businesses run bottled coolers in some areas and mains-fed in others. For the fuller comparison, see our bottled vs mains-fed guide.
How to measure your progress
Rather than a single headline number, track a few practical metrics over time:
- Number of disposable cups purchased per month
- Number of bottles ordered versus bottles actually used
- Bottles lost, damaged or not returned
- Number of locations moved from bottled to mains-fed, where relevant
