Greentech Festival

• Refreshing water from the tap: Thanks to the GROHE Blue water system, more than 3,000 single-use plastic bottles (1l) and around 325kg CO₂ [1] have been avoided at the festival on opening day

• Collaboration is key: GROHE’s partnerships with handball team Füchse Berlin and social business everwave demonstrate how tackling the plastic waste crisis could look

• Future of sustainable showering: The brand’s new water-recycling shower GROHE Everstream attracted hundreds of visitors

Düsseldorf, 16 June 2023 – GROHE is partnering with the 5th annual Greentech Festival in Berlin to accelerate efforts towards a resource-saving future. At the event, one of the leading global brands for complete bathroom solutions and kitchen fittings is presenting its innovative technologies, which are designed to enable a more sustainable everyday life by saving water and energy without compromising on comfort. Demonstrating the potential impacts this can make right on site, the GROHE Blue water system, which delivers chilled, filtered, still, medium or sparkling water straight kitchen faucet, provides visitors with drinking water and has thereby helped to avoid 3,000 single-use plastic bottles and approximately 325 kg of CO₂ [1]  on the festival’s opening day. The full scope of the brand’s holistic plastic-reduction strategy was the focus of a panel talk at the event, where GROHE together with its partners social business everwave and local handball team Füchse Berlin declared the importance of collaborations for a more sustainable future.

Another highlight of the GROHE booth is the German premiere of GROHE Everstream, the brand’s first water-recycling shower technology circulates hygienically treated water in order to create the showering experience users expect but consuming as little fresh water as possible – and using far less energy. The shower system uses as little as a quarter of the water and a third of the energy typically required by traditional showers, translating into a cost-saving of up to 65% a year for a four-person household and up to 70% fewer CO2 emissions, depending on individual showering habits.

Making a positive impact right on site

Currently 11 million tons of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year (1) and marine plastic pollution alone has increased tenfold since 1980 (2). With water at the core of its business, GROHE has set itself the ambition of protecting this resource from plastic pollution. The brand demonstrates how this can be done directly at the Greentech Festival: By using two GROHE Blue water stations on the event site, visitors, exhibitors, and festival staff are encouraged to source drinking water directly from the faucet rather than buying and throwing away pre-filled plastic bottles on site. “As a manufacturer, we have an obligation to develop products that enable consumers to live in a more environmentally friendly way – without having to sacrifice comfort or water enjoyment. GROHE Blue meets this ambition to the highest extent. The water system allows people to live without single-use plastic bottles and thus has a positive impact on the global plastic waste problem. We are very proud to be able to contribute to making the Greentech Festival even more sustainable with our product solutions,” said Katharina Lattmann, Leader, Brand & Activation, Business Unit Watersystems, LIXIL EMENA.

Together we change – and achieve a plastic-free future

As an international platform for exchange and networking, the Greentech Festival highlights the importance of collaboration. This is also reflected in GROHE’s partnerships with social business everwave and, most recently, with local handball team Füchse Berlin. To fight global water pollution, GROHE´s and everwave’s long-term cooperation goes far beyond financial sponsorship: Both organizations work hand-in-hand to raise awareness of the plastic crisis and to rid lakes and reservoirs of plastic waste through innovative clean-up technologies. To reduce the consumption of new plastic as well, GROHE has entered a partnership with Berlin-based handball team Füchse Berlin. For this reason, the GROHE Blue water system has been integrated into the facilities of the team, so athletes and team staff can refill their bottles with fresh drinking water directly from the faucet, thus saving up to 30,000 PET returnable water bottles per year.

In their panel discussion "Together for a plastic-free future", jointly organized with Drees & Sommer, GROHE and its partners everwave and Füchse Berlin emphasized the importance of different stakeholders working together at eye level to realize their goal of reducing plastic waste – and achieving a positive sustainable impact.

“Our collaborative work with everwave and the Füchse Berlin is based on the important goal of a plastic-free future. Although our organizations are built differently, we share one vision that brings us together and lets us collaborate very closely and effectively. We will continue to work towards the cause that unites us,” said Katharina Lattmann.

“The time everwave and GROHE have put into this collaboration has paid off in many ways as we have been able to protect a growing number of waters. The inconvenient truth is that our world produces a staggering two billion tons of trash every year, and more than a third of that is generated by just ten countries. That´s why we are delighted to have GROHE as a long-term partner at our side to strive a plastic-free future, driven by a common goal and our own high-tech solutions," said Inga Hilbig, Head of Marketing, everwave.

Volker Zerbe, Branch Director, Füchse Berlin, elaborated: “Just as we do on the pitch, we also want to deliver in terms of climate protection and sustainability. Together with GROHE, we are now able to accelerate the reduction of our plastic and carbon footprint. According to independent calculations, with our current annual consumption of 30,000 litres of water, we can achieve a CO2 saving of approximately 1.9 tonnes of greenhouse gases per year by switching to a GROHE Blue Pure system. These are impactful improvements we are striving to achieve, and that´s why we are very excited about our new partnership with GROHE."

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