WCD Wins Contract to supply NBS Retail & Admin Branches

WaterCoolersDirect (WCD), specialists in drinking water solutions for businesses and homeowners, has secured a national contract with a leading facilities management company, to replace all bottled water coolers with its range of plumbed-in solutions across all UK retail and administration branches of the Nationwide Building Society.

Under the terms of the agreement, WCD is delivering a substantial cost saving to Nationwide each year for its water provision. Not only will the Building Society realise huge financial savings but also the environmental benefits are extremely significant, eliminating vehicle bottle water deliveries to all sites and reducing the carbon footprint dramatically.

Fred Cairns Palmer, managing director at WCD said: ‘We are delighted to have secured this contract. It has taken a lot of dedication and hard work to get to this point but alongside our facilities management partner, we have provided Nationwide with undeniable proof that plumbed-in coolers are the way forward for them. This initiative supports Nationwide’s environmental sustainability strategy to reduce its environmental impacts and helps build a truly sustainable business for its members and employees.’

Nationwide’s vision is to be one of the leading performers of environmental sustainability in the UK financial services sector and the organisation has set challenging targets for carbon, waste and water reduction.

‘The switch from bottled to plumbed-in coolers significantly helps us meet our commitment to reduce our environmental impacts and has offered a significant reduction in our drinking water’s carbon footprint through the reduction of delivery miles per site,’ said James Domm, facilities manager at Nationwide. ‘We are always looking into ways of running our operations in a more sustainable way and this is one of those obvious changes that was easy to make and delivers huge benefits.’

‘The new coolers are higher in capacity and therefore we do not require as many physical units per site and the elimination of storage space for bottles is a definite benefit where space is at a premium, plus it reduces many health and safety issues,’ James added.

Plumbed-in water coolers offer a much more environmentally friendly option for delivering chilled, fresh, clean water without the risk of ever running out, even on a hot day. Sustainability credentials played an important part in securing the contract.  A reduction of an average of 15,000 18.9 litre plastic bottles (closer to 20,000 in a hot summer) per year will be saved from entering the waste stream.

Switching from bottled coolers to plumbed-in also solves a health and safety issue as no more heavy bottles need to be lifted by members of staff and the need to store numerous large water bottles is eliminated, freeing up valuable office space. WaterCoolersDirect prides itself in its efficient and expert customer service and offers the widest range of desktop and floor standing coolers on the market.