Founder’s Thoughts: Embracing the Power of Silence
There is only one power in the universe. It doesn’t matter what you call it. You can call it God, you can call it Soul, the Universe, Kwame, Louise, Jason, whatever. It’s not what you call something that gives it meaning. As one of my friends (who loves accounting!) often says it's substance over legal form. This one force that flows through everything is indivisible. You can’t cut it in half, you can’t divide it. It’s ONE. Only ONE. This ONE force flows through you and me. But it's often tempting for me to regard myself, you and this force as separate from one another.
It's easy for this to happen because we almost always give a division for everything in our physical life. Male and female. Up and down. North or South. Light and dark. Hot and cold. Good and bad. These are all dichotomies and splits that we have in our lives. We are immersed in this division. We even see our mind and heart as separate entities. And we often wrestle if we should follow our hearts or lead with our minds. Even though the physical world is made up of these dichotomies, we have to learn how to fuse them.
That’s what silence does for me. Because no matter how hard you try to cut silence in half, it’s like zero: you still get silence. The Zen philosophy says “it’s the space between the bars that holds the tiger. And it’s the silence between the notes that makes the music. And it’s the space inside the vase that makes the vase.” It can also be said that the space within us is the real us. We stay silent and constant within an ever-changing body. In fact, 99% of what makes us is invisible: our thoughts, personality, and emotions. Finding that silence and embracing it means that you go to the place within you that you cannot divide. Just like you can’t divide the source, you can’t divide your essence either.
Embracing the power of silence is a way to know your source and yourself. As an enthusiastic and extroverted founder, I often find myself running at a million miles an hour. I've had to make special efforts to look after my well-being by ensuring that I embrace stillness and silence. This is why I make it part of my morning routine. It truly prepares me for almost anything that the day presents. I get to relax knowing with more certainty that GOD has my back no matter what. For example, over the last few weeks, we had some stresses getting our water bottles manufactured and delivered to the important TEDGlobal event in Tanzania. Our products had been held up at the Tanzania customs, and they were asking $18,000 to release the bottles. For a minute, my mind was racing with thoughts like “Are we ever going to get these bottles? Will this whole trip be a waste? All this hassle and no one will even get a TED bottle?”
I woke up on the last day of the TED conference and decided to be still for a while, just be grateful, and quiet my mind to silent levels. I continued to think of all the amazing things that had happened to me during those 4 days at the conference and how blessed I truly am. I stayed in this quiet space for a few minutes. I got ready for the day ahead with less anxiety about the bottles, knowing that all I could do was trust that Life/God is always working for me. I met Waleed 20 mins later and, BOOM, he said the bottles had arrived in the early hours of that morning. All was good! In fact, the bottles arriving on the last day was going to be a sweet send-off gift for all the attendees. Our bottles would stand out rather being amongst several other gifts in the gift bag. Everyone would really see our bottles and understand GiveMeTap’s impact and mission.
This experience reminded me that when you make meditation a daily practice and embrace the power of silence, you get to know your source. You make conscious contact with the source. And there’s so much healing and renewed energy that can be found when in contact with the One source. As we begin to embrace silence, we begin to see the world as connected and ONE. We reduce our frictions with one another. We can begin to see ourselves in everyone and everything. It’s one of the few experiences that we can have in our daily lives that comes close to spiritual awakening.
Do You Want to Empower African Women? Give Them Access to Clean Water.
If you live in a Western country, you’re familiar with how the feminist movement is changing society. This has led to women standing up and speaking out to defend their rights. They’re asking for more leadership roles in the workplace and compensation based on their skills, not their gender. Some women want to split household and child rearing obligations with their partners. And others want the freedom to behave as they wish without societal pressure.
Women empowerment starts at a much more basic level in the poorest regions of Africa. It starts with having access to basic human rights such as food, water, and proper sanitation. It’s hard to believe that today some 663 million people around the world still don’t have easy access to clean water. And an astounding 2.4 billion don’t have access to proper sanitation, clean and private toilets. Although water scarcity affects everyone, women have their own particular set of challenges.
How Does Water Shortage in Africa Affect Women?
In remote villages in Sub-Saharan Africa, women are mainly responsible for household duties and taking care of their family. It’s also their responsibility to secure water for their families. This task – of getting water - is often so simple for us; we just walk to a faucet and, boom, WATER. But for women and girls in these remote villages, it’s a lengthy 3.5-mile walk to get water. That’s longer than a 5K race course! It gets even more challenging during drought periods when the water table level drops. Women, then, have to dig deeper, travel to further streams, or make several trips in one the day.
This time spent collecting water prevents girls from attending school full-time. Even when they get to school, the lack of water compromises the quality of their education. Currently, 43% of schools in Ghana don’t have access to water. As a result, many students get dehydrated in the intense heat, which reduces their ability to concentrate. In many schools, girls and boys share toilets. That exposes girls to sexual harassment, humiliation, and rape. Not to mention the embarrassment and self-consciousness. Any girl would agree that being watched by your classmates while you’re in the bathroom is mortifying.
Girls face even greater challenges at school during their menstrual period. Period pads are expensive in rural African communities, causing girls to look for alternatives such as rags, leaves, newspaper and even mud. These methods are neither comfortable nor effective, often causing embarrassing blood stains. Many African cultures ostracize, mock and humiliate women during their periods. As a result, girls usually miss up to eight school days during their period. Sadly, many of them drop out of school right after reaching puberty.
In Ghana, 20% fewer girls are completing primary school compared to boys. This has further consequences for them later in life. Better educated women are healthier, have higher earning potential, and are more active in the formal labor force. They also provide better healthcare and education for their children. Clean water in schools increases girls attendance and a shot at a better future. That is why we recently funded a clean water project at a school in Wa, Ghana.
How Does Access to Clean Water Change African Women Lives?
When water is easily accessible, everything changes. Girls have more free time to attend school, learn, and play with their friends. Mothers can use their little available time to engage in income generating activities, such as soybean farming and Shea butter production.
Clean water also improves people’s health. No longer will they have to settle for the low-quality water that gives them diseases such cholera and dysentery (which is a fancy word for diarrhea). Clean water enables women to cook more nutritious food and adopt better sanitary practices. They are also able to develop better hygiene habits and teach their kids about hygiene as well. As a result, the rate of malnutrition and water-related diseases decrease drastically, and women can spend less time taking care of sick family members. Having access to clean water means that the 675,000 people who die prematurely from polluted water diseases get a chance to live.
Easy access to water and private toilets improves the well-being of women. They can go to the bathroom at any time without the fear of being seen, ridiculed or harassed. They can drink enough water during the day, which reduces their risk of contracting urinary tract infections (UTI) and increases their productivity. Knowing that clean water is readily available reduces the anxiety of women, as they don’t need to worry if their family will have enough water or will get sick from the polluted water.
Water really does change everything!
For the past 6 years, we've been funding water projects in Africa through the sales of our bottles. For each stainless steel bottle we sell, we give 5 years of access to clean water to a person in need. One of our main criteria for selecting a project is that women are involved in the management of the water well. This is done by electing women onto a water committee whose job it is to ensure the that the water borehole continues to work.
Being part of the water committee enhances a woman’s role in her community and her sense of self. She becomes an ambassador of the benefits of clean water for families and the community. She gains an active voice in decision-making processes, formerly dominated by men. She is empowered and empowers others towards a better, healthier future.
Every woman deserves the chance to live up to their full potential. In rural communities of Africa, that means giving them clean water. With water, women are able to live better lives, have healthier families, and contribute economically. They might even start asking their husbands to do the dishes every now and then...
How I keep moving forward during times of confusion
I am about to break-through!! As a CEO, founder, leader, etc., it's often expected of you to know everything with absolute certainty all the time — or to at least give an air that you've got it all figured out. But that's just a romanticized viewpoint. Over the last couple of months, I’ve been in a state of confusion, unsure of what it is exactly that I need to do next. This state has been quite frustrating because I wasn’t making decisions regarding the future direction of our company “fast enough.”
During this state of confusion, I stumbled on an old passage I read many years ago from David Deida, which read: ”A man must be prepared to give 100% to his purpose, fulfill his karma or dissolve it, and then let go of that specific form of living. He must be capable of not knowing what to do with his life, entering a period of unknowingness and waiting for a vision or a new form of purpose to emerge. These cycles of strong specific action followed by periods of not knowing what the hell is going on are natural for a man who is shedding layers of karma in his relaxation into truth."
After reading it several times, I’m now certain that a breakthrough in thinking is on the horizon, and I’m excited! Now, I feel like my old beliefs/visions are coming out of alignment with my current desires —my brain is shedding old ideas and searching for something different. This small change in my thinking means I can stop beating myself up for not having all of the answers right away, and simply appreciate the process and phase of discovery.
There will always be periods where the next step isn't always obvious, especially when growing a business/doing something meaningful. I will continue to adopt this mindset and refrain from self-degradation in times of uncertainty. So, I am eager to go through this period and emerge again an even better version of myself — like a caterpillar in a cocoon that’s about to turn into a butterfly.
How do you manage times when you're confused or uncertain?
As part of our 5th year celebration, GiveMeTap has launched a brand new initiative to work with a talented artist and use their artwork to bring GiveMeTap bottles to life. We’ve partnered with the brilliant Sarah Owusu to create the first ever African inspired water bottle collection, ‘Owusuism’.
Sarah’s work has been consistently inspired by Africa and in particular, her Ghanaian heritage. She strives to show how we can use bold colours and encompass traditional African symbolism in a contemporary way to emphasize how beautiful and brilliant African-inspired art can be. Together, we wanted to showcase our shared strong values through the best means we know how = a water bottle.
The ‘Owusuism’ GiveMeTap collection showcases some of Sarah’s work in a really exciting way. The ‘Our Africa’ bottle has been painted with 4 specific, bold colours, Black to represent the people, yellow to represent the sun and the gold on the land, green to represent the richness of the land and orange to represent the harvest. The ‘Symbolic’ bottle is showered with four key Adinkra symbols, which derive from Cote D'Ivoire and Ghana. They represent the concepts Gye Nyame, which translates to "Only God"; Akoma, which symbolises a patient love; Adinkranehene, meaning "Authority" and Mpatapo which symbolises "Harmony".
By creating a bottle with GiveMeTap, Sarah is embarking on her first ever partnership to bring her artwork to life in a way that can benefit those in her home-country, Ghana. Every ‘Owusuism’ GiveMeTap bottle purchased will give someone in Ghana access to 5 years of clean drinking water. With each sip you’ll be supporting not only those in need across Ghana, but a local talent here in London who is challenging the way African art is used & portrayed.
Just after speaking with our NGO partner in Ghana about (frustrating) international policies on water and sanitation, and then declaring that I going work to affect things at the policy level, I get an invitation from The White House!!! Going to discuss Africa-America relations, immigration policies and more. Thank you very much God!
I was like "how did they hear/know about little old me who just touched down in USA" and then I was reminded of a quote: "when little dogs keep yapping the big dogs hear". I'll keep that mic in my hand and work to continue helping in anyway I can.
Today, if you don't absolutely NEED (and we mean NEED) a bottle or anything else for that matter, then there is no NEED to buy it now.
The team and I are going to be having fun and I'd love for you to go spend time with people you love the most. There will always be time for shopping.
You've probably gotten tons of emails with the latest and greatest Black Friday offers, urging you to buy NOW. Well today, instead of us using our energy, time and money to buy more things, how about we get out of our inboxes, turn the computer off, and go do something that makes our heart's skip a beat. Do what makes you feel alive. Most of all enjoy all that you have right now and celebrate the fact that you're awesome.
Be bold. And don't buy a GiveMeTap bottle today.
You can always get one on Giving Tuesday.
Edwin
The Water Guy & Founder
"We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.” - Dave Ramsey
P.S Tonight I am going to practice some dance moves.
Sanum is spending time with her grandma eating amazing indian food.
Waleed is with me as we "dance like no one is watching".
Big Idea 2015: Africa Is the Land of Business Opportunity!
Big Idea 2015: Africa Is the Land of Business Opportunity!
We've recently seen a shift in our perception of the African continent and the potential of individual countries to become leading economic powerhouses. Africa is Great!
This Kenyan School Harvests All The Water That Students Need To Drink
The importance of community involvement in development is becoming more and more apparent as new innovations are being created to solve some of the biggest problems.
It's so cool to see this being applied to the issue of water and education in Kenya!
As published on FastCoexist by Adele Peters
When it rains, most buildings shed the water away. But for the last 10 years, two designers have been working on perfecting a new form of architecture that does the opposite: Waterbank buildings harvest and store as much rainwater as possible.
A new school campus in Kenya based on the design will collect 1.5 million liters of water a year—more than enough to provide water for all of the students and support garden plots in a region where clean water can be hard to find. Every building on the campus, from dorms and classrooms to a soccer stadium, is designed to harvest water and channel it into underground storage.
Though Kenya's climate is semi-arid, the architects say there is enough rainfall each year for the population. "Many people who don't have access to clean water, and this is true in Africa, are living in regions where it's raining at least 600 millimeters per year," says Jane Harrison, co-founder of PITCHAfrica, the nonprofit that designed the new buildings. "And that's a very strange fact. The issue, of course, is that the water evaporates and it's erratic, so people don't have it when they need it."
The architects are taking a different approach than many water nonprofits. "A lot of focus tends to be on the problems of water being solved by technological solutions," says Harrison. "But one of the big factors with water is social. The idea that there needed to be a social approach—a community approach to water—was important to us."
When the project first began in 2004, the architects had the idea to combine water collection with soccer—since soccer brings communities together. "I think the more we began to look at Africa, the more we began to think about the incredible power that football has there," Harrison explains. "It really does cross over many social differences and brings a large and diverse audience together. And we felt that if you could couple that kind of energy and attention with the huge need of water, it would be powerful."
In 2010, the team built a prototype of a water-harvesting soccer stadium during the World Cup. For the last four years, they've been working on bringing the architecture to life in Africa, and experimenting with creating different types of community buildings, since they quickly realized that the design could work well with more than stadiums.
First to be built was a four-classroom school in Laikipia, Kenya, which was named the"Greenest School on Earth" last year. With careful planning, it was possible to build for the same cost as a typical rural school of the same size. The new campus built this year replicates that project at a much larger scale—and includes the team's first actual soccer stadium as part of the design.
Next year, the nonprofit hopes to release Waterbanks OS, an open-source operating manual that explains how to design, build, and use a Waterbanks building—including how to manage water supply in the dry season so the water doesn't run out.
The technology could work in many parts of the world, the designers say, including places that seem too dry and those that actually do get plenty of rainfall, but struggle with pollution. "This is surreal, but we've now been approached by organizations working in the rainforest in Peru," says Harrison. "These are communities who do not have access to clean water because of what's been going on in the rainforest. Our relationship to water is very skewed. I think part of our larger mission is to start to draw attention to that."
#WaterHeroWednesday is something new we're trying here at GiveMeTap.
Every Wednesday we'll bring you three new Water Heroes that are part of the GiveMeTap family (622 and counting!).
In case you've forgotten (we forgive you) we call them Water Heroes because they're the ones who provide our bottle holders with free water on the go!
We're kicking things off over at boxparkshoreditch where we've been spending a lot of time over the last few weeks.
1. KORRITO
Launched by sister and brother team, Joo Lee and Sukho Lee, KORRITO brings the sizzle of Seoul to Shoreditch and beyond. Offering mouth-watering, authentic Korean BBQ burritos, rice bowls and salad boxes, they are committed to making delicious food with only the highest quality ingredients. Their BBQ is marinated using authentic, traditional Korean ingredients and the Kimchi is packed full of natural probiotics to help boost digestion!
Check out KORRITO's profile here.
2. Milk Tea & Pearl
With a plethora of tempting flavours including coconut, passion fruit and lychee as well as distinctive tapioca ‘bubbles’ (made naturally believe it or not!) bubble tea has quickly become THE drink of choice in Taiwan. Milk Tea & Pearl is the first company in London completely dedicated to creating authentic Taiwanese bubble tea and has been hydrating Londoners with their delicious tea since 2010.
Check out Milk Tea & Pearl's profile here.
3. Dum Dums
Dum Dums Donutterie offers a selection of freshly BAKED (yes, it's possible!) handmade and significantly lower fat doughnuts. Paul Hurley, the founder of Dum Dums, is an artisan doughnut chef who has been making doughnuts since 1997. After working with some of the biggest names in the doughnut and food industry he began a quest to create the best doughnut in the world. In 2013, Paul realised that the only way to create the best doughnut possible was to do it himself. In doing so, he opened the Dum Dums Donutterie, the first ever Donutterie and hasn't looked back since!
Check out Dum Dums' profile here for you free water refills.
Don't forget to download the GiveMeTap iOS and Android apps to get your free water refills on the go!
Part 2 of our boxparkshoreditch series will be out this time next Wednesday.
Why talking to our bottle users is crucial, and why we've stopped selling our sports lids
We always love sharing with you our thoughts and the decisions we make along this journey as a for-purpose business. We know you don't want to know our entire life history (we'll save that for the book!), but when it comes to making decisions that effect our GiveMeTap community, it's important for us to let you know exactly what's been going on.
On Thursday, we decided to say 'goodbye' to our 500ml sports caps by removing them all from our online shop. This means that, for the moment, only the 600ml bottles and the 500ml Classic bottles with screw cap are available online. Although this means that it will be a little while until our regular bottles are back in business, here are some reasons why we feel it is the right decision:
1) Last Wednesday, I arranged to have a coffee with an awesome GiveMeTapper, Teijinder, who was helping us out with some market research. As an avid user of the 500ml Sports Cap, she explained that the sports cap wasn't as usable as the screw cap, and that the carabiner unusable when the bottle was full...That's a bit awkward.
2) After taking this feedback straight to GMT HQ. All of us realised that we mainly used the 600ml bottles and hardly ever used the sports cap. How can we offer a product that we aren't really using much ourselves? Double Awkward!
3) We decided to retest the sports cap, and quickly realised that the flow of water was somewhat slow, which is not the best when you really need to get a mouthful of water! Triple Awkward.
Those were enough 'awkward turtle' moments for us to realise that we needed to make some changes to the lids design, and fast. We're committed to bringing you the best quality water bottles possible, and the sports cap just didn't make the cut. We're looking into producing a better sports variation so that easy access to water is guaranteed. Although we want to be able to fund water projects (SO EXCITED TO SHARE SOME NEWS SOON!) by selling lots of GiveMeTap bottles, they have to be the best they can be.
This is why we just love talking to you and getting feedback on everything we do. It helps us get better, helps you stay hydrated, and means we can provide clean water to those currently without. Thanks for taking the ride with us and telling us when our seatbelt isn't quite tight enough. This is what makes our community awesome.
We want to make sure you enjoy using your bottle, so if you would like a screw cap lid to replace your sports cap on the 500ml bottle, drop us an email at [email protected]. We will then send you a screw cap, on us, as soon as they become available.
After our first water project in Malawi, we were fortunate to meet Theresa Sato who explained to us the improvements in the community since the installation of the Elephant pump in her village.
Education was such a major problem for the children in the village, as they would frequently contract diseases and be unable to attend school.Now things are different. Children are drinking and bathing in clean water, eradicating the risks of diseases that keep them away from school.
Theresa also told us about how the pressure on the health clinic had been significantly reduced as less people needed to visit for water-related reasons. Another awesome example of how dynamic the improvements to a community can be, simply through providing them with clean water.
Guest Post for Social Enterprise UK: Why should we buy social?
as posted on SocialSaturday.org by SEUK
13th September 2014
To celebrate the launch of Social Saturday, it is only fit to pose the question of why 'buying social' is so important. As a company based on the concept of buying for social good, we tend to passionately discuss this question quite a bit at GiveMeTap HQ. However, when I ask friends & family this same question, there can be a lot of vague nuances of saving the environment or helping the poor, when actually, there is so much more to it.
Recently, we've seen an emergence of businesses that sell products in order to serve their customers as well as produce some sort of social good. This means we've discovered a world in which we don't have to differentiate between making money and helping others. We've also seen an increase in people actually buying from these businesses, meaning that this new world could actually work! This is why each of us should ignite this culture of socially conscious buying.
Taking a step back, this prospect can seem a bit overwhelming. How can one person, buying their daily essentials, make that much of a difference? It is actually quite an exciting prospect. For example, according to studies in the US, 51% of Millennials are already changing their buying behaviours away from environmentally unfriendly brands . It is this behaviour and being more conscious of what enters your household, you intrinsically feed this culture to the people around you.
For example, at your next meeting, you may suggest the environmental benefits for your business to swap to a more sustainable printer, or the cost benefits of abolishing plastic cups, improving the culture of responsibility within the firm. You may even share your new way of living with your friends who then start buying fair trade snacks for their children's lunchboxes and environmentally friendly toilet roll for home. The change in what you purchase is noticed by other businesses that then recognise that they can provide these socially responsible options. This is the ideal we can strive for.
The evidence of this can be seen first hand in the running of our own business. Through a small, simple purchase of buying a GiveMeTap bottle, we have been able to help bring clean water to almost 5000 people in Africa, while people have been able to live more sustainably, switching away from plastic bottles. They then spread the GiveMeTap mission to friends, family and even their workplace, meaning that we can further our impacts as our company grows.
We underestimate the sheer power that we have as individuals who make a choice to buy things and what this translates to. As we've learnt from our friend, Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility. When we buy a bar of chocolate or a new T-shirt, not only do we have the influence to effect what flavours or prints are released next season, we are exercising the ability to effect how a business interacts with the World. Use your power!
Stock issues - a learning curve we'd love to share
Many of you may have seen the 'SOLD OUT' signs all over the GiveMeTap shop page. Not only are our best selling blue bottles out of stock, but also our silver bottles. We have many of you on our waiting list, hoping to be able to help us hydrate the world with your bottle purchase. Since it has been a couple of weeks since we've had this problem, we thought that we should keep you guys updated on what is going on at GMT HQ.
Firstly, do not worry! Our depletion of stock is not a bad sign, it is actually a great symbol of a pretty awesome month! Throughout August, many of you may have seen GiveMeTap posters while travelling up and down escalators on the London Underground. This was a result of an extensive marketing campaign across approximately 40 stations, in order to promote GiveMeTap.
This led to an amazing surge in sales across our website and during our GiveMeTap events in Central London. It also led to some unexpected partnerships with large and small companies across London, the UK and even Internationally. Things were pretty awesome. They still are.
This all now means that we are able to fund another water project in Ghana. It is all so very exciting to see all your purchases make such a difference [more news on that soon]. However, what it also means is that that our stock has depleted quite unexpectedly, leaving us with few bottles available.
As a small business, managing stock and inventory can provide quite a hefty challenge. There is an art to understanding when to buy stock and in what quantities - and this is an art we are yet to master with our limited resources. What we have realised, is that as we grow, managing this will be critical. Our next batch of bottles will be ready to order by mid-october, so watch this space!
We thought it was about time that we start sharing more of our journey as a start-up social enterprise with all of our GiveMeTappers. Everyday we are learning new things and developing the business. Thanks for supporting us on our journey to hydrate the World. Keep being awesome.
California is the first state to ban the plastic bag!
California Plastic Bag Ban Would Be First Of Its Kind In The Nation
Reuters
Posted: Huffington Post 08/30/2014 4:00 am EDT Updated: 08/30/2014 10:59 am EDT
By Aaron Mendelson
SACRAMENTO, Calif., Aug 30 (Reuters) - The California state legislature enacted a ban on plastic grocery bags on Friday near the end of its two-year session, a measure that if signed into law would become the first of its kind in America.
A number of cities and counties in California and other U.S. states, including Hawaii's Maui County, have made it illegal for grocery stores to pack purchases in plastic. But at the state level, opposition from plastic bag makers has usually prevailed.
The California Senate voted 22-15 for the bill, which must be signed into law by Sept. 30 by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, who has not signaled a position on the measure.
"Single-use plastic bags not only litter our beaches, but also our mountains, our deserts, and our rivers, streams and lakes," said state Senator Alex Padilla, who sponsored the bill.
Padilla backed a similar measure last year but it failed by three votes. The fate of this bill was uncertain until the waning hours of the session after falling three votes short in the state's Assembly on Monday.
But after picking up the support of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the bill passed a second vote in the Assembly.
The measure would ban grocery stores from handing out single-use grocery bags with customers' purchases, and provide money to local plastic bag companies to retool to make heavier, multiple-use bags that customers could buy.
Environmentalists have pushed for banning plastic bags, which are cheaper for supermarkets to use than paper bags, but create mountains of trash that is difficult to recycle. In California, there is particular concern that the bags, when swept out to sea, could harm ocean life.
After the defeat of his earlier bill, Padilla won the support of some California-based bag makers by including the funding for retooling. But in recent months, out-of-state manufacturers campaigned against the bill, even producing television advertisements targeting Padilla, who is running for secretary of state.
Cathy Browne, general manager at Crown Poly, a plastic bag manufacturer in Huntington Park, California, said the bill would lead to layoffs at companies like hers.
More than 10 billion plastic bags are used in California each year, according to an estimate by Californians Against Waste, an advocacy group supporting the bill. (Writing by Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Sharon Bernstein and Mark Heinrich)
The IceBucket Challenge? How about the Hydrate The World Challenge?
We've just received an amazing request from a Water Hero who wants to buy and donate a GiveMeTap bottle to a homeless person, instead of doing the Ice Bucket Challenge.
HOW AWESOME IS THAT?! If you would like to do the same, let us know & we can arrange for your bottle to be gifted to the homeless.
Water for You. Water for Everyone.
