Pouya Parsafar was already questioning his company’s use of bottled water when he came across an awareness campaign that promoted switching to tap water.
He seized the opportunity and for five months, his IT company, Enterprise Systems Trading, has used a filtering system.
Before the switch, the company would go through 12 five-gallon bottles per month and 2,000 half-litre ones, said Mr Parsafar, managing director of the company, which has 30 employees.
The system cost about Dhs 4,000 and the filtering system had a return on investment of less than a year, but money was not the deciding factor, he said.
Money was, however, a motivation for some of the 12 companies that have so far joined Drop it, a campaign to encourage people to use tap water. One company realised it was spending Dhs 350,000 on bottled water, said Tatiana Antonelli Abella, co-founder of Goumbook and organiser of the campaign.
Potable water in the UAE generally has a high quality, except in some areas of Sharjah, she said. Piping and storage tanks must be well maintained to ensure that quality remains high.
With bottled water, consumers should be aware that some brands filter tap water or the by-product of industrial processes, she said. But a more serious issue is the plastic used to store it.