You may ask for a bottle of Evian or San Pellegrino at Singapore’s three-Michelin-starred Restaurant Zen.
However you will not get one.
The restaurant, which fees practically $500 per individual for dinner, solely serves water from the Swedish firm Nordaq, mentioned Government Chef Martin Öfner.
Dishes and drinks on the restaurant are produced from the water too, from its shares to the juices in its non-alcoholic beverage pairing, he mentioned.
Zen is certainly one of greater than 140 Michelin-starred eating places that serve Nordaq water, firm CEO Johanna Mattsson informed CNBC Travel. The water, which is purified and bottled on-site utilizing native faucet water, can be current in additional than 700 luxurious resorts, casinos and cruise ships, she mentioned.
The corporate goals to scale back single-use water bottles within the hospitality business — each a budget plastic selection generally present in resort rooms, to glass-bottled European mineral water served in higher-end eating places. The latter can journey hundreds of miles between its supply to the place it’s finally consumed.
“Transportation of water over water does not make sense,” mentioned Mattsson. “That is what we need to eradicate.”
Nordaq’s bottles are free from plastic labeling in order that they are often simply washed and reused, and so they include vast mouths in order that they are often cleaned in common dishwashers, she mentioned.
Bottles are additionally securely capped and date-stamped after they’re refilled, mentioned Mattsson.
Mandarin Oriental Singapore has had Nordaq’s water system on faucet since 2023, with bottles current within the resort’s rooms, eating places, spa and health club.
Lodge Supervisor Cindy Kong let CNBC Journey tour its bottling facility to see how the bottles are washed, inspected, crammed and sealed. She mentioned the power can produce 500 bottles of purified water in an hour.
“Usually we course of between 1,000 to 2,000 [bottles] day-after-day,” she mentioned.
Nordaq is certainly one of many firms within the premium sustainable water enterprise. Castalie water is current in additional than 700 resorts in France, in accordance with its web site, whereas Purezza water is served in additional than 5,000 venues throughout 13 nations, in accordance with the corporate’s LinkedIn web page.
The Indian hospitality firm ITC Inns created its personal model of “zero-mile” water referred to as SunyaAqua to scale back single-use plastic bottles in its 140 resorts. “Each guilt-free sip is bottled in-house, eliminating the necessity for transport,” New Delhi’s ITC Maurya posted on Fb in July.
Hospitality firms are the core marketplace for the Swiss sustainable water model Be WTR. It operates inside resorts — with a facility opening quickly in Rosewood Abu Dhabi — and thru centralized amenities.
Within the latter, Be WTR’s founder and CEO Mike Hecker mentioned water could journey barely farther than ITC Lodge’s “zero mile” water, however not by a lot.
“We do not need to transport greater than 10 kilometers round our bottling facility, as a result of, as you nicely know, carbon footprint … is very impacted by transport,” he informed CNBC. “We attempt to be situated on the level of consumption as a lot as we will.”
The corporate’s fundamental operations are within the United Arab Emirates, however the water is offered in 12 nations, together with latest expansions into Canada and China, mentioned Hecker. The corporate closed a $44 million spherical of Collection C funding in October.
Be WTR may be present in resorts as different as Le Bristol Paris, opened in 1925, to The Normal Singapore (right here), which opened practically 100 years later in December 2024.
Supply: The Normal, Singapore
Be WTR signed a worldwide settlement with Accor to be a most well-liked companion for the French hospitality firm’s luxurious resort manufacturers.
“We’re the primary firm to have a worldwide water settlement focusing on [Accor’s] five-star manufacturers, such because the Raffles, Pullman [and] Sofitel,” he mentioned.
Much less waste, greater revenue
Firms that provide the tourism and meals industries with no- or low-transport filtered water say they save thousands and thousands of plastic bottles from getting used yearly. However they’ve one other promoting level — they’ll generate a revenue for his or her shoppers too.
Be WTR’s Hecker mentioned its first bottling plant at Westin Dubai Mina Seyahi saved “over a million imported bottles a yr. And this can be a appreciable achievement, each in … carbon footprint, but additionally in creating optimistic revenue for our shopper.”
CNBC’s Journey Editor Monica Pitrelli samples Nordaq water with CEO Johanna Mattsson. A working tally on Nordaq’s web site says the corporate has saved some 5.7 billion plastic bottles from getting used, a statistic primarily based on information extracted from the corporate’s bottling amenities, the corporate mentioned.
Supply: Zap PR
Hecker declined to say how a lot a bottle of Be WTR sells for, however mentioned it is “competitively priced” with glass-bottled mineral water from Europe.
Nordaq’s Mattsson says every bottle of its water prices between 11 cents and 21 cents to supply. However the water sells for far more. The Providore Singapore sells free-flow nonetheless and glowing Nordaq water for $2 per individual, however some luxurious resorts cost 4 occasions that value for a single bottle.
Purezza estimates every of its bottles price round 30 cents to supply, or about one-fifth the worth of standard bottled water, in accordance with an organization sales brochure. However each may be offered for a similar value, in accordance with the brochure, which estimated that 1,000 bottles of Purezza water offered at $5 per bottle might generate $13,200 in annual revenue for the vendor.
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