Say Goodbye to Plastic Water Bottles With the Mananalu Water and Boomerang Partnership

Photo: Courtesy of Mananalu Powered by Boomerang Water

The battle against single-use plastic water bottles has gained significant momentum with technology fostering the use of recycled aluminum water bottles at several Hawai‘i hotels and Kamehameha Schools Kapālama.

What’s pushed the aluminum bottles into the spotlight?

Call it big-time star power. Hawai‘i-born actor Jason Momoa, who plays Aquaman, owns Mananalu Water and has partnered with Boomerang, a North Carolina-based reuse company, to roll out a high-tech machine that can be stationed at sites to sanitize and fill aluminum bottles with his water.

Standing racks for guests to place empty bottles have been strategically placed at several hotels, including The Twin Fin, Romer House Waikīkī, ‘Alohilani Resort Waikīkī Beach, Four Seasons Resort Hualālai, Four Seasons Resort Lāna‘i and Four Seasons Resort Ko Olina.

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Momoa and his business partners expect more hotels, visitor destinations and schools to come aboard soon. Eventually, they want to usher in a new norm, where people return water bottles for reuse instead of disposing of them.

“I originally launched Mananalu to challenge the drinking water industry to shift away from single-use plastic bottles that are destroying the health of people and the planet,” Momoa said at a January press event at The Twin Fin. “This technology is a game-changer, and I’m honored to be able to bring it to Hawai‘i first … to help restore the local ecosystem.”

Photo: Courtesy of Mananalu Powered by Boomerang Water

If guests in each of the 50,000 or so hotel rooms in Hawai‘i drank from just two water bottles a day, that’s 100,000 bottles a day—a staggering waste, according to Boomerang’s Jason Dibble and Jerrod Freund. And not only do plastic bottles fill up landfills, transporting them is costly to the environment, too.

As people become more mindful of their carbon footprints, “You’ll find that people want to do the right thing and return” the bottles, Dibble says. He adds that about 95% of bottles are returned at sites where the machines are stationed around the country.