Crew with a Cause: Water Without Waste

Water Without Waste, whose tagline is “sustainable drinking water solutions,” was created by Capt. Marja Kok, whose last charge was S/Y Ti-Coyo. Her hope is to help captains, crew, and owners think more consciously about using plastic bottled water “as a source of hydration and shifting their mindset to more sustainable and healthier alternatives on board.” Water Without Waste provides a complete filtration/purification and distribution program — sparkling, chilling, and ambient purified water on tap.

“After being part of the superyacht industry for ten years and seeing the ridiculous quantities of plastic bottled water been carried up and forth on these yachts and the plastic waste created from that, I thought that a technically advanced and wealthy industry so dependent on healthy oceans could do better,” Kok says. In September 2017, Kok started creating awareness and studied sustainable alternatives for plastic bottled water. She surveyed yachts about plastic bottled water on superyachts, reasons for drinking it, and willingness to make a change — of which 96 percent of respondents said they’d like to consider more sustainable solutions as an alternative for plastic bottled water.  

After a period of studying possible solutions, Kok says she crossed paths with Capt. Andreas Buhl, a developer and expert in drinking-water purification. A superyacht captain himself — whose latest charge was S/Y Annagine — Capt. Buhl was the perfect person to team up with. “Until now, [the] main point of attention of most nautical companies in water treatment has been to make freshwater out of seawater and to maintain the water-quality level in the water tanks, often by using harsh chemicals like chlorine,” she says. “Chemistry-wise, this ensures only that you have a reliable quality of shower water in the yacht.” The Water Without Waste solution is to filtrate/purify downstream the water tanks (at the necessary level of filtration/purification) as close to the tap as possible to make sure that superior quality drinking water is available without microplastics, disinfecting byproducts from chlorine, pharmaceutical residues, or the possible contamination coming from piping and tanks.