Is Free Water the answer? Josh Cliffords founder of Free Water

https://www.freewater.io/
Should bottled water be free? 
Will the best advertising space be on beverages and food in the future? 
Is any packaging recyclable? 
Is everything in the grocery store full of carcinogens? 

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Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:34

Welcome to sustainable packaging with Cory Connors . I'm really excited about this guest today. He has a very innovative concept. His name is Josh Cliffords. He is the founder of Free Water . How are you, sir? I'm great, Cory . Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for taking some time to be on our show. Well, I first saw your, your videos on Tik TOK. Now that is a brilliant idea. Can you, can you tell us about your background and kind of what, what led you to starting this company?

Josh Cliffords: 1:05

Yeah. I, I think I don't have the typical background. I was essential on a trip around the world for my 30th birthday and I, I met some refugees from Nigeria while traveling through Rome and they really opened up my eyes to the hardships of. What's going on in the world. And so I ended up canceling that trip around the world and I started a nonprofit organization called save the refugees. And for a year and a half on and off volunteering, we helped more than 10,000 people in need. And if they spoke English or Spanish we spoke to them and said, Hey, tell us your story. And we found you know, 80% of them were refugees because their house got bombed to the ground, but 20 of them, because they didn't have access to water or food or. And so digging a little deeper after hearing the same story over and over again. And it's, it's really hard to dig up the numbers, but I've found that roughly 35 million people die every year around the world because they don't have access to water, food or medicine. And when I say medicine, it's not an open heart surgery or chemotherapy. If you gave everyone on earth, a bar of soap that would save five to 10 million lives a year, just a bar of soap. Yeah. And so the goal was to create a new sort of system that made donating to a charity or a specific cause as easy as eating a free slice of pizza or drinking a free beer or having a free water. And so fast forward to today and we've launched what will become the world's first free supermarket. And our first product is free Springwater and aluminum bottles and paper. And the water's free because the packaging is the ad space and it's a new type of media and e-commerce platform it's cheaper per 10 impressions and direct mail, which happens to have the highest ROI in that USA ad industry for the state. And and yeah, we're really excited about we'll do 50,000 beverages this year. We'll do more than a million next year. Why I do this by work on this is every, every product, every free product donates to a different charitable cause. So beginning with water, 10 cents from every beverage is donated to charity to build water wells for people in need. And when you do the math, we'll only need 10% of Americans to save money and drink our free product so we can solve the global water crisis permanently. And so. The PR the power of free is the high volume. And if you, if you donate a lot of that to charity, there's, there's not really, you could, you could solve just about every cause that's in need without a penny of taxpayer money.

Cory Connors: 3:33

That's an incredible, incredible idea. I totally support it. And I think it's such a unique way to advertise for the company. That's paying you to put their logos or their, you know, maybe they're advertising a specific event that they're having, or a launch of a new you know, flavor of, of product or, you know, whatever the case may be. Yeah. That's when I saw that, because my degrees in advertising, I spent my whole career in packaging, but this is brilliant advertising. I love it. Well done.

Josh Cliffords: 4:08

So in the future the packaging is the new interface. And so, and again, it's water mainly, but food secondary, they're the only advertising mediums that could penetrate any, any advertising. Client, right. Any audience, everybody needs to drink water. And so why not use it? Why not use premium water as a vehicle to get any message in anyone's hands?

Cory Connors: 4:35

I just, I love it. Can, can you walk us through the process? Let's say I'm a CEO of a company I'm calling you because I want to advertise my new line of highlighters, you know, w w what's the, what's the.

Josh Cliffords: 4:48

First it's all about volume. So we've got a limit and bottles and paper cartons, and we could do a smaller MOQ on the aluminum bottles, which is a pallet 1600 beverages. It's great for smaller companies that are getting off the ground. The con is it's a little bit more expensive because it's aluminum. And it has less ad space naturally than a paper carton, because this has four practically equal sides reads more like a. These ones, the MOQ starts at 10,000. And so obviously but it's much cheaper and again, it reads more like a book and it's got more room for advertising of so you would choose, okay. I want the aluminum bottle quantity, or I want the paper carton. We would say, Hey, Corey you have your own in-house graphic designer and you would say yes or no. And so either you would design it or we would help for you to design it. And so we give everybody a couple hours of design work included. So if you'd, if you just had all the logos and intro ready, we could put that together extremely quickly. If you needed something ultra custom, we would have to charge more for that because we pay our graphic designer hourly and. The next question is, are you distributing it or are we distributing it? So we're distributing it. And unless it's a special event where we already have people on the ground ready to distribute, we would have to charge a little bit extra because it is water. And you're talking about a heavy product. And if you're talking about 10,000 boxes of water, that's 5,000 kilos of weight, different take. Yeah. It's not like it's not a paper flyer. And then, and then we replaced that order. And so it takes roughly six weeks for the product to be landed. Once the artwork is accepted a little bit slower today with the supply chain issues with the box water, but nothing not on what it has been slowed down with the aluminum and, and yeah, either, either we distributed or you distribute it. There you go.

Cory Connors: 6:40

That's amazing. So could I ask you to distribute it to a specific demographic or air region or?

Josh Cliffords: 6:51

Yes. So, okay. Again, today is Freewater version 0.001 earliest of the early days. B2B, we can ship anywhere in the lower 48 states right now. Probably Canada someone's asked for it yet, but why not? It's it's just a little longer haul. We're only distributing direct to the consumer at Austin at the moment. There's very many opportunities. Main takeaway is this is a blank canvas. And so there's a, there's a million different combinations of what you could print on here as a business solution and other way, QR codes, you could connect anything on the internet. So there, there really is a near infinite number of business solutions you could create. And so let's say if you were an insurance company and you really want it, university of Texas, Austin, or MIT or whatever university you really had. We're an insurance company. We want these college students cause we want to sign them up for life insurance, health insurance, car insurance, cell, phone insurance, all the insurances. So we'd be like, well, Hey Corey, are you, are you really willing? Are you willing to pay an extra 10 or 15 cents to guarantee we get it into those hands? And if you said, yep, I'm willing to do an extra 15 cents per unit. So we call up the university that you're interested. And we find a club or the university itself, and we're going to pay them those 10 or 15 cents to give away Corey's you know, insurance company advertisement. And who's going to say no to that because they're getting paid 10 or 15 cents to give away a free product that also donates 10 cents to charity. So on an order of a hundred thousand beverages, for example, they're getting 10 or $15,000 as well. Building half of a water, well in Kenya for a village which they get to put their name on that wall because it has a black, and it's going to say Corey Corey built as well. And so if there's many ways to get it into the exact person's hand that you want, and that's just with physical nontechnical processes, but then when you add the QR codes, obviously over time, it could be highly individualized on that, on that front.

Cory Connors: 9:04

I think it's incredible. I always, I just had a kind of a. Brainstorm. What if a big company had an initiative like Google and they wanted to tell all their employees about this new system that they were coming out with, or this new health benefit that they were offering, they can put, put it on the water bottles and launch

Josh Cliffords: 9:24

it. Yeah. As we, it's not just traditional advertising, if there was a hurricane or. When we own the printing and are a bigger company in the manufacturing, we'll be able to print out emergency water overnight. This is where the hospital is. This ordinance, these would be ours is the food drop. This is how you apply a tourniquet purify water, scan this QR code to get the latest info from the government scan that QR code to give in both to the government. They don't. Yeah. During the pandemic. If we knew anyone in the CDC, we would have sold them millions of boxes that probably would say social distance, or it can also be educational material. As you said, at a any sort of OPSEC, any sort of process that they want you to know by art, they're already paying for water. Why not just. Put that message right in your hand and face every single day. For example, I know people have been hacked before. It should say in every tech company do not plug in any phone camera or drive when you don't know where it came from or, or at a school, you know, they're distributing beverages at a school. It should have all of the most important educational material, math, sciences, English, put it right on that.

Cory Connors: 11:11

Brilliant. A friend of mine founded a company called Digican . I got to connect you with him. They directly print onto aluminum cans and I called them actually. Yeah. David Kaupe and he's a brilliant man and a good friend of mine. So I highly I'll connect you with them. If you, if you haven't already,

Josh Cliffords: 11:30

I didn't speak to him, but yet.

Cory Connors: 11:34

That would be a good, a good source for you. So where, where do you fill the containers? Anywhere.

Josh Cliffords: 11:39

So today? No, not quite anywhere else outsourcing. And the aluminum bottles are manufactured in a spring and plant in Georgia. Georgia is actually famous for their spring water, which is why Coca-Cola, but their first massive big plant there. The paper cartons were manufactured in a location in Northern California. And that happens to be building a second facility in a different location in Georgia. Right? When we get into manufacturing, that's when things really start to change because free products enable new types of manufacturing and distribution models, which really improve aggregate efficiency. And so I'll give you an example today where we're delivering 24 packs. Like an Amazon driver, which is really inefficient. It's one pack over here, drive across town, one pack over there, drive across town, one pack over there. At the end of the day, I might be in the same neighbor, but as the first house, this is a problem Amazon and everyone delivers has, but in the future, when we're manufacturing the micro factories and we've got a micro factory in your neighborhood, we're going to offer free local. And so it's, it's a different level of efficiency. Since the products free actually negatively price free plus charity, we will just drop all the products off. We'll sign up 200 houses in a row, and then just 100 beverages, 100 beverages, 100 beverages. And so when we've got the free product, when we've got free water being delivered to your house for free, and we've got those logistics squared away and you're signed up as. That's when we start adding the free soda, the free beer, the free groceries, clothing, computers, everything else that we plan to offer in the future.

Cory Connors: 13:21

I love it. Another thing that you might consider is teaming up with a company like Ridwell or Recyclops have you heard of them? So they have an Uber style. Recycling system where, where people sign up, you put a, a metal box on your front porch and you put things in it that aren't recyclable at your municipality. So plastic glass batteries light bulbs. So you could, you could deliver water and take recycling. This could, this could team up,

Josh Cliffords: 13:55

you know, The reason why that wouldn't work for us as, as follows. Number one, I was just at the pack expo in Vegas, the largest packaging conference in the world, and nothing is really recyclable. Number one, just that's the main takeaway. And number two, everything is full of cancer causing chemicals that will eventually kill you. Anything you bought your supermarket today will kill you in a slow, horrible death. And so so today this paper. 92% paper, 8% other is known as the world's most eco-friendly packaging. It's slightly more eco-friendly than the aluminum bottle. These are refilled, even if you throw it in the trash cans, 70% of aluminum beverages have been recycled. And they're th they tend to be 80 to 85% recycled material. If you can drink out of a beer, can throw it in the recycle bin. And eight weeks later, someone else was drinking out of that can have something else. But the reason why neither of these are really eco-friendly, at least to our standards is the mining and all the, what it takes to make this and that. Let me, let me tell you the story about this, but this story, I'm not to explain what this box is the same with anything that you buy at the supermarket. And so today's world. The problem is that you buy a box of Cheerios, for example, and you dissect what's in the product, the plastic bag and the packaging. The probably circled five, the globe five or 10,000 miles before you bought it for three bucks, which means if you did it all at a, at a vertically integrated location, they could sell it for $1 and still have the same profit margins. But so let me explain. So this eco-friendly box that we offer today, the tree was cut down in north America and then it's put on a truck and it's driven about a hundred miles to the paper mill and there it's turned into a particle. And from there it's then shipped to Saudi Arabia where they put a very thin layer of foil. It's still 92% paid for 8%. Other you hot water is the only beverage that takes on the flavor of the packaging. So you do need to have protective barriers in there, unlike a Milford juice, it's not as essential. And it gets shipped from Saudi Arabia with different location in the U S to put a very thin layer of plastic. Then it gets shipped to Amsterdam for the. On printing presses that are 60 years old. So, and I'll imagine how much better your home printer has gotten just in the past decade. These people are still using printing presses that are 60 years old with ink that came from China. Then the box gets shipped flat to the U S to the men, the manufacturer, all this, the spring and so on, and it gets filled with liquid. And if it's a very large-scale order, then it stops at another warehouse where it sits for awhile. And then it ends up in your local grocery store. You drink it, hopefully you refill it. Five minutes later, you throw it in the recycle bin and you probably can't recycle it at anywhere in the USA. And that's, that's the truth. That's the most eco-friendly container honor. And it's, it's really fucked up. And so in the future, we intend to make the world's first 100%. Or even the liner in this plastic cap has made out of one plant has more than a hundred thousand industrial use cases. And that's going to enable us to grow the hemp, that location a turn it into raw materials, that location, a turn it into the water box, that vocation a, fill it with liquid at location, a give it away for free from or near location. And then we will act, as you mentioned, we will actually pick it up from you. We are going to pay you and our future digital currency to pick up the rubbish and trash from you. So we can bring it back to location a and dispose of the properly or recycle it. But that full loop process will enable us to produce far more oxygen than carbon. We'll have other byproducts that will allow us to make CBD oil free and clothing and other things free. It will be a full loop and it will allow us even as a small company and investing maybe 20 million in that packaging at the time, it will allow us to produce these cartons for about a nickel I'm out the door, which is the same price or cheaper than Coca-Cola and produce a plastic bottle for even with all of their power and money and greatness, because their packaging is circling the boat two dozen times before it gets. And so, you know, by it's the only way to really ensure that something a can be recycled or reused B that it all comes from one place and see that it's not filled with carcinogens because as I said, everything in your supermarket today as a carcinogen in it, unfortunately that's the state of the United States supply chain. I don't care if you buy it at whole foods, if you bought it wherever. It's covered in plastic. It's leaching into there. You can't recycle it. As you probably know there's always that number, if you're lucky on the bottom of the plastic thing and no two plastics can be combined. And so it's, it's a problem. That's why recycling will only, the recycling of plastic will only get worse throughout the ages and every year or every three years. The world's biggest companies, design new types of plastic that are cheaper to make them more money. They don't care if it is even more cancerous or more deadly or unrecyclable. And that's the unfortunate state of the world we live in today, at least as Americans, you know?

Cory Connors: 19:15

Wow. That's a, that's some doom and gloom. My friend, I I. I hope you're wrong.

Josh Cliffords: 19:22

You though. If we stopped plastic cold Turkey today no one used and made any more plastic today and you've melted it down into a third of an inch thick slab. It would be larger than the state of Texas and plastics already on pace to outweigh fish in the ocean by 20 50, 20, 60, and every raindrop on earth. Right now, that's been tested with microplastics and it was poisonous. So even if you were living in Siberia hunting with a bow and arrow and, you know, doing everything the natural way. You'll still probably die a plastic related death, unfortunately.

Cory Connors: 19:56

Wow. Okay. Well, thank you so much. I This is depressing. I I have to disagree with some of the things that you said. I do believe that packaging is very recyclable. It's been proven by, by many experts in our industry and you know, especially aluminum. It does, it, it doesn't, it doesn't degrade at all when you recycle it. And it's a. A hundred percent recyclable. So I encourage listeners of this podcast. Please continue to recycling. It's incredibly important to our ecosystem and our world

Josh Cliffords: 20:29

and not recycle. And trust me, we use aluminum. And I'm just saying that even in a city like Austin, where the very few things that many people would assume could be recycled camp. And that goes for even a bigger city than Austin. And that's, you know, that's, that's straight out of the manufacturer's mouth. They'll, they'll tell you, it's, it's just the way that it is and in this country, unfortunately there's no there's no law saying that every plastic needs to be composed out at the same number, which would make sense. Right. So that means it could all be theoretically, combined and used for other.

Cory Connors: 21:10

I think that'll change. I really do. I think there'll be some extended producer responsibility laws taking effect here soon. Oregon and Maine have already proved them. And those hopefully will change the amount of PCR needed in each package. And eventually I agree with you that we need to streamline. The different numbers of plastics available and downsize that so that everything can be easily recycled. Eventually curbside would be ideal, but if store drop off as needed, that would be fine, whatever it takes. But yeah, I think I have a. Bright vision of the future because I'm seeing what's happening in the industry. And so

Josh Cliffords: 21:56

yeah, I do too. It sounds doom and gloom, but I I'm a firm believer it's too little too late just because of you know, the Mariana trench and deepest parts of the ocean, or they look like plastic soup right now. It's just full of plastic mush. And I don't know how. Get that stuff out. You know, it's one thing to try to clean up the islands of trash, which are many, five now, bigger than Texas, but get the bottoms of the oceans and depths of the earth. There's just no way that. We could remedy those things, unfortunately.

Cory Connors: 22:31

I do too, and I, and I, I, to be Frank, I think you are. And so I think that's good news. But I'm excited for what you're doing with the free water. I think it's a great idea and I, I definitely support the concept. I would recommend using the aluminum cans or bottles. They're, they're a great, a great option for packaging.

Josh Cliffords: 22:53

Yeah, we are, we offer it. We'll also offer glass in the future. It's just. And the U S again, we do not have a system for recycling glass bottles, like other countries do where their bottles are thicker and be used often, unfortunately.

Cory Connors: 23:08

So we'll do it in Oregon. You might want to consider that we have it's called bottle drop and we reuse Beer and beverage bottles over and over again, so that these things are available. We, we just need to educate the world about them and adopt them in different areas, I

Josh Cliffords: 23:28

think. Yeah. So I hope Oregon advertisers are listening. Choose to go with the re recyclable glass. We'll also be offering stainless steel reusable bottles soon. Which you know is obviously not single use.

Cory Connors: 23:45

Great idea. Yeah. The reusable glass, reusable aluminum. Brilliant. I love it. Let's do that. Well, thank you so much. What's the best way for people to get ahold of you, Josh?

Josh Cliffords: 23:55

Our website today or Tik TOK, which is how we match our Tik. TOK is free water that IO and our website is free. water.io.

Cory Connors: 24:04

Great. Thanks again. I appreciate it. Really I'm excited to see what happens with your company. Well, then

Josh Cliffords: 24:11

my pleasure. Thanks. Thanks for having me on the show. Thank you.