Office water savings calculator
See how much your office spends on bottled water, how much plastic it throws away, and how quickly a plumbed-in filtered cooler pays for itself.
Adjust prices and assumptions
If you rent a bottled cooler.
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plastic bottles avoided a year
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of plastic kept out of the bin each year
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saved over 3 years, after buying the cooler
Cost over 3 years
You spend now—per year
Cooler running cost—electricity + filters, per year
Pays for itself in—based on the cooler below
How we calculate
- Water used: staff × litres per person per workday × workdays per year (230 by default). Litres per person is your estimate; change it above.
- Single-use bottles: 600 ml bottles at $0.58 each, based on a 24 × 600 ml carton at $13.95 (Paper Express, Oct 2026).
- Plastic: about 15 g of PET per 600 ml bottle, scaled from an average of 12.7 g per 500 ml bottle (Beverage Marketing Corporation for the IBWA). Lighter bottles exist, so treat this as an estimate.
- Delivered 15 L bottles: $12.12 per bottle, based on a 15 L non-returnable office refill listing, plus any rental you enter.
- Electricity: 33c per kWh, within the 30–35c range Australian households pay in 2026 (Mozo, citing AER data). Cooler standby use is taken as the ENERGY STAR Version 2.0 maximum: under 0.87 kWh a day for hot-and-cold coolers and under 0.16 kWh for cold-only, running every day of the year. Real use depends on how much hot and cold water you draw.
- Filters: the replacement filter price from our store × replacements per year.
- Tap water: about $0.002 a litre, the Sydney tap water figure quoted by CHOICE. It's included but barely moves the total.
- Payback: cooler price ÷ monthly saving. Installation by a plumber is not included.