A better bottle of water for a greener planet

Hannah Rodriguez, a senior at Mililani High School, shows off her personalized Pathwater bottles.

Plastic water bottles may be convenient, but they are an environmental nightmare. In the U.S. alone, we go through 50 billion plastic bottles per year or 100 million plastic water bottles per day. Only about 9 percent of those bottles are recycled. The rest end up in landfills, the ocean or beaches. The U.S. bottled water industry uses about 76 million barrels of oil annually to manufacture, transport and store their products.

Pathwater offers one solution to the problem of plastic water bottles. The California-based firm sells bottled water in affordable, reusable, recyclable aluminum bottles. The water goes through a 7-step reverse osmosis filtration process. Co-founders Shadi Bakour and Amer Orabi created the company with the everyday consumer in mind— a person who might otherwise pick up a water in a plastic bottle at a convenience store or vending machine.

Pathwater has been available on Oahu since summer 2018. “We brought it in because it’s a great product and something we think people need to look at,” says Kevin Wong of KYD Inc., Hawaii distributor of Path-water. “Everybody should be using it.”

The Pathwater bottle is easy to handwash for reuse. Just fill the bottle with soapy water, replace the cap and shake the bottle well, then rinse both the bottle and lid thoroughly. Do not put the Pathwater bottle in the dishwater or use abrasive sponges.

Besides being environmentally-friendly, Pathwater bottles are easy to get creative with. Decorating and personalizing them is simple, and may customers take advantage of the opportunity to make their bottles unique.

Pathwater comes in reusable, recylclable aluminum bottles.

According to Wong, Pathwater can be found locally at Safeway supermarkets throughout the state as well as restaurants such as Bangkok Chef, Cholo’s Homestyle Mexican, Morning Brew Coffee and Bistro, Diamond Head Cove and Storto’s Deli and Sandwich Shop. Path-water is also offered at the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing and Bishop Museum.

Schools are also expressing interest in Pathwater. “This is the sort of thing kids want,” Wong says. “The youth of America are very worried about energy and the environment. They want to be part of the green movement.”

Wong says retail price for Pathwater is comparable to water sold in single-use bottles, usually about $1.75 for a small bottle and $2.95 for a large. “That’s about a quarter of the price of other reusable aluminum bottles.”

To get the word out about Pathwater, Wong invites readers to participate in an ongoing contest. Follow @pathwater-hawaii on Instagram. Take a picture of your Pathwater bottle (ideally decorated and personalized) and post it to your Instagram and tag the photo @pathwaterhawaii with the hashtag #pathwater-hawaii. Also be sure to tag three friends. KYD Inc. will review the photos, choose winners and notify them via Instagram direct message. Winners will receive items such as Pathwater carabiner clips or headbands.

While KYD Inc. is currently the only distributor for Pathwater in Hawaii, they don’t necessarily want to stay that way Wong is such a strong believer in the product he invites other distributors to contact him about distributing Pathwater themselves.

“We want people to get used to the idea of using these bottles,” Wong says. “It’s a whole new mindset. So much of what we use every day is disposable, and that’s not good, especially in some place such as Hawaii. We need to be more grown up and take more responsibility.”