Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business – A new startup called Tap has a bold ambition: convince people to stop buying plastic bottles of water.
Tap launched an app Tuesday that displays nearby clean drinking water locations, from restaurants and retail stores to public water fountains, so you can refill your water bottle.
"Water is a mispriced public good," founder Samuel Rosen told CNN Business.
"I believe we, as consumers, have been robbed of our own water and sold back to us by corporations."
Rosen is the cofounder and former CEO of on-demand storage startup MakeSpace.
Consumers may also start seeing blue "Tap" signs in store windows signaling the business is friendly to thirsty guests.
Earlier this month, the UN Intergovernmental Panel released a bombshell climate change report that warned global warming is on track to have a disastrous impact if nothing changes by 2030.
The report said the impact could result in extreme drought, wildfires, floods and food shortages for hundreds of millions of people.
Eight million tons of plastic enter the water each year, according to the World Economic Forum, and more plastic is expected in our oceans than fish by 2050 in terms of weight, if our current usage of plastic continues.
But Tap isn’t the first to connect people to clean drinking water.