Zero Soda - The Idea

I want to make a beverage company that produces zero waste. Here’s how it’ll work.

You are feeling thirsty so you go to a Zero Soda machine and order a drink for three dollars and fifty cents. Out comes a distinctive glass bottle with your beverage of choice: plain soda, diet soda, flavored soda, plain water, mint water, or other naturally flavored waters. The bottle shows that you’re drinking Zero Soda, the bottle cap is the only thing that says what flavor you are drinking. When the drink is dispensed, the machine lets to know that you will get money back if you return the empty bottle to a Zero Soda machine.

Later, you take your bottle to a Zero Soda machine and are given the choice of two dollars back for the bottle or a refill for fifty cents. You opt for the refill and put your bottle in the machine. The machine then steam cleans the bottle, fills it with liquid delight, and gives the bottle back to you. Throughout this process there is near zero waste. The bottle cap is probably the only thing that won’t get recycled all of the time. This makes Zero Soda the first of its kind: a consumer consumption model that results in near zero waste.

Also worth noting is that the machines would communicate the status of the machine wirelessly to the Zero Soda servers using the cell network. The things it would communicate are how much of the syrups and other ingredients are left, how many bottles there are, how much money the machine has collected, and whether the machine will need maintenance soon.