TL;DR
Vivreau earned a Bronze Stevie Award for Sustainable Business Model at the 2025 American Business Awards, recognizing a plumbed-in water model built to take single-use plastic and delivery emissions out of commercial buildings.
-
- What the Sustainable Business Model category recognized, and how the 2025 judging worked
- The measurable parts of the model, from ocean plastic recovery to program cost reduction
- How filtering water at the point of use removes plastic and deliveries from a building’s footprint
This article was originally written in 05/2025 and has since been updated in 06/2026 to reflect new findings and data points.
Vivreau Wins Bronze Stevie® Award
The American Business Awards®, widely regarded as the premier business awards program in the United States, received over 3,600 nominations this year from organizations representing all industries and company sizes. Vivreau was recognized for its work developing innovative water solutions for a sustainable future. More than 250 professionals worldwide participated in the judging process to select this year’s Stevie Award winners.
“At Vivreau, we’re honored to be recognized with a Stevie® Award for our dedication to sustainability in business,” said Tom Spillane, Vice President of Technical Excellence at Vivreau. “This award reaffirms the meaningful impact our team is making in shaping a future that reduces waste, minimizes carbon emissions, and leverages the simplicity of local water supplies to their fullest potential. We are profoundly inspired to continue pushing boundaries as we build more sustainable business models that benefit people and the planet.”
Vivreau’s winning nomination highlights its commitment to sustainability through the development of water dispensers that eliminate single-use plastic waste and lower carbon emissions. By utilizing local water sources, these systems enable businesses to significantly reduce their carbon footprint. Judges praised Vivreau for its outstanding commitment to sustainability, combining product innovation, impactful partnerships, and educational efforts to create a tangible environmental impact.
“Organizations across the United States continue to demonstrate resilience and innovation,” said Stevie Awards president Maggie Miller. “The 2025 Stevie winners have helped drive that success through their innovation, persistence, and hard work. We congratulate all of the winners in the 2025 ABAs and look forward to celebrating their achievements during our June 10 gala event in New York.”
The American Business Awards will host a celebratory gala on June 10, 2025, in New York City, honoring winners of this year’s competition. Details about awards and a complete list of 2025 winners can be found at www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.
Which Water Filtration Systems Are Best for Reducing Plastic Waste in an Office Setting?
The award recognized a business model rather than a single product, so the useful question for a facilities or sustainability lead is what that model actually removes from a building.
A plumbed-in system filters the existing water supply at the point of use. That takes the recurring case deliveries, pallet storage, refrigeration, and disposal out of the program entirely. Vivreau reports a reduction in water program cost of up to 86 percent.
The plastic side is counted directly. Through the 4ocean Pull-A-Pound partnership, 5 lbs of ocean plastic is recovered for every dispenser sold, separate from the single-use bottles the system displaces on site.
Reusable glass bottle programs extend the same logic into boardrooms and meeting rooms, where bottled water is usually most visible and hardest to remove.
FAQs
-
What did Vivreau win at the 2025 American Business Awards?
Vivreau received a Bronze Stevie Award in the Sustainable Business Model category at the 2025 American Business Awards, the 23rd edition of the program. The award recognized Vivreau’s commitment to reducing single-use plastic waste and carbon emissions by drawing on local water supplies at the point of use rather than shipping bottled water. More than 3,600 nominations were submitted that year and reviewed by more than 250 judges worldwide. Winners were celebrated at a gala in New York City on June 10, 2025. Tom Spillane, VP of Technical Excellence at Vivreau, spoke on behalf of the team, noting the award reaffirmed the impact of reducing waste and minimizing carbon emissions.
-
How does a plumbed-in water system reduce a company's plastic waste?
It removes the container from the equation. A plumbed-in dispenser filters the building’s existing water supply and serves it on demand, so there is no case of bottles to order, receive, store, refrigerate, or discard. Staff fill a reusable glass or personal bottle at the tap instead. The reduction compounds across a large site, because every floor that would have carried its own bottled water inventory now draws from the same line. Vivreau also recovers 5 lbs of ocean plastic through 4ocean for every dispenser sold, which is additional to whatever single-use plastic the installation displaces. Co-branded reusable bottles handle the meeting-room and boardroom cases that usually default back to bottled water.
-
Is sustainability the main reason companies switch to a plumbed-in water program?
Usually not on its own. Cost and operational simplicity tend to lead, because a bottled water program carries recurring spend and steady staff time in deliveries, storage, refrigeration, lifting, and disposal. Experience is close behind, since still, sparkling, and hot water on demand is now an expected amenity rather than an upgrade. Sustainability is what makes the decision easy to defend and easy to report, particularly where an organization has public commitments or an ESG reporting cycle to feed. In practice the strongest business cases stack all of these: a lower program cost, less work for the facilities team, a better amenity, and a reduction that a sustainability lead can put in a report.
-
What sustainability metrics can a company report from a water program?
The reportable numbers usually fall into three groups. Plastic: single-use bottles displaced on site, plus the 5 lbs of ocean plastic Vivreau recovers per dispenser sold through 4ocean. Emissions and waste: Vivreau publishes averages including an 86 percent reduction in CO2 compared with pre-bottled water, and roughly 1,115 pounds less waste per year for a single dispenser. Logistics: deliveries eliminated, which for a high-volume bottling system Vivreau puts at up to 60,000 truck deliveries per year on average. Treat these as averages rather than guarantees, and baseline your own bottled water spend and volume before installation so the comparison afterward rests on your own data.
