Back2Tap Products for Everyday Green Living

 

The Back2Tap story

In the fall of 2007, after seeing countless plastic water bottles overflowing from garbage cans at parks and fields across town, we felt we had to do something. Initially, we wanted to work with the town to improve recycling efforts. After learning that only 23% of all disposable plastic water bottles are recycled and after learning about the tremendous waste involved in the production and distribution of water in disposable plastic bottles, we knew that recycling was not enough. This was the start of Back2Tap.It began as a movement within the Recreation Department in Chatham, NJ, that encouraged people playing sports and using the parks and fields to switch from disposable plastic bottles to reusable ones. Shortly thereafter, we decided to expand the Back2Tap movement by coordinating a stainless steel bottle fundraiser at all the schools across town. The bottles were imprinted with the school's logo and the sales of the bottles helped the schools raise money while offering a solution to the mountain of plastic bottles found in the trash. We focused a lot of time and effort on educating students and parents about the negative environmental impact of disposable plastic water bottles. Three of the seven schools in town are using their profits from the sale of stainless steel bottles to install filtered water coolers to provide great tasting chilled tap water to students and teachers. Fifteen hundred bottles were sold in Chatham, representing an annual savings to our planet of 70,000 gallons of water, 200 barrels of oil and 33 tons of CO2 - all of which are involved in the production and distribution of disposable plastic water bottles.

We were inspired by our community's response, and now have a full-time, online, women-owned business. We are motivated to get other communities and organizations to continue the grassroots movement to go Back2Tap.

 

Some info on Back2Tap and sustainable steel bottles

About our founders

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Mary Lonergan graduated from Villanova University with a B.S. in Accounting and Fordham Graduate School with an M.B.A. in Marketing. She spent 12 years working in sales, marketing and market research. After a year in marketing finance at Johnson & Johnson , Mary spent four years in sales at a start-up sports apparel company (company revenue grew from $250,000 to over $10 million), followed by two years in consumer marketing with Reckitt & Colman (French's Mustard brand) and almost five years in Account Management and Sales with market research firm (Information Resources, Inc.). Mary spent the next 10 years at home raising five children while still keeping active running county-wide events including a Support Our Troops Rally, Beanie Babies for Peace event, Habitat for Humanity Home-in-a-Box build, and now Back2Tap.

Mary, Ellen, Lydia and Ann. Collectively, we parent 11 children, are 183 years old and possess 95 years of work experience.Ellen Blazoski graduated with a B.A. in Business and an M.B.A. from Rice University. She worked in the Real Estate Investment Department of the Prudential Insurance Company for 9 years where she was involved in real estate development and leasing as well as commercial property acquisitions and sales. Ellen worked in the PruPower department of Prudential, participating in the investment analysis of power generation plants, private toll roads and sports arenas. Her last two years with Prudential were in the "community" focused investment area of Prudential with oversight of investments in affordable housing and charter schools. Since leaving the corporate world, Ellen worked for 5 years at a community pre-school and has been very involved volunteering in her son's schools and with various sports teams. She also coordinated Habitat for Humanity's "Home In A Box", a community-wide initiative, with Mary Lonergan in 2006.

Lydia Chambers graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in Earth Sciences and went on to earn a Master's Degree in Geology at the University of Colorado. She worked for Shell and Exxon for most of her career as a geological engineer and later as an in-house hydro geologist supervising the assessment and remediation of contaminated sites. Since quitting her paid job to raise her two sons in 1995, she has become involved in municipal government, by serving on the Chatham Township Planning Board, Open Space committee, and a sub-committee of the Environmental Commission. Over the past five years she has lead several grass roots environmental campaigns: pesticide reduction, no-idling, and now Back2Tap.

Ann Whitman graduated with a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Delaware. She worked in employee benefits specializing in pension plan design in acquisitions, divestitures and early retirement. She worked for Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton, a NYC law firm, the Airline Pilots Association, and Rhone-Poulenc, a French chemical company. Since becoming a mother of two, Ann has spent her time as a volunteer. She has been on the Board of Directors of the Junior League of Summit, the Board of Trustees of the Winston School, President of the Board of Directors of Stanley Nursery School, and President of the PTO of Washington Avenue School, Chatham, NJ. Ann has also spent time as a volunteer for her children's other schools, Overlook Hospital, Habitat for Humanity, the Presbyterian Church of Chatham Township and The Community Food Bank of Morristown.