Bottled water banned in Australian town

A small New South Wales town has banned the sale of bottled water - the first in the world? Bundanoon residents voted 3 months ago for the ban and now have properly implemented it. Chilled filtered water dispensers can be found around the town and bottles of still water have been replaced in shops by reusable containers. Consumers can buy the bottles and refill them from the store or at a streetside drinking fountain.

Why has Bundanoon gone this far? Cost is one reason given, but it seems that the environmental impact of manufacture, transport and disposal of bottled water was unjustified especially when a bottling company decided they wanted to extract water from the local area, truck it to Sydney, bottle it and then redistribute it back to the Bundanoon area! Locals are delighted and shopkeepers relieved that the publicity has boosted sales of the "Bundy on tap"-labelled containers so that they are not missing out on valuable revenue.

At the same time, the Murray River in South Australia has saline levels approaching dangerous proportions for use as drinking water.
Receding water levels in the river and Lakes Alexandrina and Albert appear responsible for the rise in salinity. Emergency plans have also been prepared for the distribution of free bottled water to the 30,000 residents of South Australian towns who could be affected. Each resident would require 4 litres of drinking water per day. If the water remains unacceptably salty for more than a week, water would be tankered in. The nearby city of Adelaide is also in the firing line - the city of possibly only one year away from depletion of its reservoirs - that's around 1.3 million residents affected.

Here in the UK, we are not in such dire straits but we need to heed the warnings from the drier parts of the world. To this end, the Government has just launched a £1 million campaign to promote household water saving. We are being encouraged to reduce our average water use from 150 litres per day to 130 litres a day. Southerners the worst offenders - all those power showers, sprinklers, swimming pools and hot tubs apparently...

London is set to install water fountains in Hammersmith Bus Station and Tower Bridge Museum so that the 400,000 visitors who pass through these sites each year can fill bottles with up to 500ml chilled water for 20p. More fountains across the city are to come if the pilot proves a success. So it appears that Thames Water is going to help London Mayor Boris Johnson to fulfil his pledge of green alternatives to bottled water throughout the city; the Mayor has only managed one water fountain to date - in Hyde Park last week!
All nicely in time for the 2012 Olympics that organisers want to present as the Green Olympics.

'Please Do Not Hesitate to Contact Me'

Quality of water and quality of service
In an age of unparalleled communication, disatisfied customers can really get their complaint out where it can receive alot of attention. With email, Twitter, Blogs and so on, the ripples in the water can rapidly become a tidal wave of opinion. The recent blog titled as above about a particular water cooler company has been so widely circulated, it has become a major source of embarrassment and unfortunately can unfairly taint all companies in the same industry.

The water cooler industry has been hard-hit by the recession, as customers turned away from bottled water and went back to tap water. The bottle-fed cooler has been designated a 'luxury' and so has been a particular victim of cost-cutting exercises. Mains-fed water coolers have not suffered so much, but new business was slow for most of the year. The positive signs of economic upturn in the UK will generate new business for the industry, but bad publicity lingers for long afterwards. A reputation for good/bad customer service is going to affect business. A good point to make here regarding a key difference between bottle-fed coolers and main-fed systems is: mains-fed coolers require far less maintenance than bottle-fed coolers and of course no deliveries. There is therefore less reliance on the supplier and less pressure on the fewer business operations required, so hopefully less opportunity for customer service to go awry.

Most businesses wouldn't operate without customers and even the best of organisations can get it wrong occassionally. So providing customers with a prompt and effective service is essential. But how to stand out from the crowd? How can a business prove that its customer service is superior? Or even that it has a functioning service that can deal with problems?

At Just Water Now, we have taken a pro-active approach to quality: we do care and do strive to improve every aspect of our services, not just complaints. How? By developing our Quality Management Policy and then putting in place systems that effectively monitor and improve quality throughout all our business operations. The whole process is under constant review to ensure that our operations actually match our policy! Every one of our operations is reported on and additional spot-checks are made from time to time. The two sets of data are then regularly audited and the results discussed at team meetings. We have found that this is the only way forward for improvement to be quantified rather than just guessed at. Customer feedback is essential for our policy to function and maintain our standards. We appreciate all feedback, both positive and negative, and we remain proactive in soliciting opinion on our service through our questionnaires and occassional follow-up phone calls. It's all a delicate balancing act, but essential to keep our customers and staff happy.