We’ve all seen it. Groups of people going through their carry on bags, throwing away bottles of water or soda before going through the TSA checkpoint. Even worse are the people who forgot they had a water bottle in their backpack and have to go through extra security once it’s discovered. While you may have thought “What a waste,” no one was doing anything about the problem. Until now.
I’ve seen water bottle refilling stations for a while. My first experience with them was at the U.S. National Parks where the use of disposable water bottles is highly discouraged. When visiting the parks we’ve always brought our Camelbak refillable bottles with us and loved the ability to fill them easily from the specially designed water fountains, often with spring fed water.
The problem is that we don’t always bring those bottles with us. They’re big and/or we just don’t remember. However, we’ll always buy a bottle of water (or ten) over the course of any trip and end up getting rid of the leftovers before the flight home.
What if you could just dump out the water and bring the bottle with you to refill after security.? Given, you could always have done this by just dumping the bottle out in a water fountain or something but in the craziness of checking in, who remembers to do that? However if the solution is right in front of you, who says “Screw the planet, I’ll just buy another bottle for $5 at the gate?”
Airports in Chicago, San Francisco and Orlando (and many others) are installing liquid disposal units right before the security lines. These receptacles encourage you to dump out the liquid and save the bottle to refill once you’re past security.
I can’t believe it’s taken us over fifteen years to think of this idea. I’m sure the stores past security aren’t thrilled about the lost revenue but I’m thankful that someone finally put two and two together and managed to come up with five. This is a win for the environment by encouraging people to reuse bottles (and to also buy less bottled water). It’s also a win for the customers who no longer have to buy a $5 bottle of Zephyrhills water in Orlando airport (does anyone think that water tastes good?). It’s also good for the TSA, as they’ll have fewer bottles of water that people will need to remove from their bags and therefore speed up the security process. We can all hope that will happen, can’t we?
Hopefully, more airports will join in on this initiative and the “TSA’s War on Water Bottles” will come to a peaceful resolution for all.
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