Polar Bottle partners with local nonprofit

BOULDER – The Oceanic Preservation Society, the Boulder-based nonprofit behind an Oscar-winning documentary, is teaming with the manufacturers of Polar Bottle in a fundraising campaign.

Polar Bottle is selling a new line of insulated custom water bottles for OPS, which creates films, photography and media to inspire people to save the oceans.

The Oceanic Preservation Society is best known for producing “The Cove,” a documentary that depicted the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan. It won the 2009 Academy Award for best documentary.

OPS is making another documentary, which it hopes to release next year at the Sundance Film Festival, said Candace Crespi, the society’s operations and logistics coordinator.

“To pull that off is not a cheap or easy thing,” Crespi said, and money from the sales will help support that effort.

Partnering with Polar Bottle also has the benefit of boosting local awareness of the small nonprofit, which has five employees. Their environmental goals also overlap, as Polar Bottle wants to reduce the use of plastic bottles that are thrown away after a single use and OPS wants “to continue to raise awareness about the plastic problem we have across the planet, which is leaving our oceans full of plastic,” Crespi said.

Polar Bottle became a partner with OPS after it reached out to several area nonprofits seeking partners for a benefit campaign, president Judy Amabile said. Polar Bottle has raised money for groups including the Red Cross and Regrow Colorado, an organization dedicated to planting saplings in land damaged by the wildfires around Colorado Springs.

The 24-ounce bottles feature the OPS logo and a picture of a whale’s tail as it dives beneath the water. The bottles are sold exclusively on the Polar Bottle website, www.polarbottle.com, for $14.99, and $5 of that will be donated directly to OPS.

Polar Bottle, which is a brand of Product Architects Inc., employs more than 50 people in Boulder, where it designs, assembles and ships the bottles. The molds are created in Denver, Amabile said.

The company scored a promotional coup last week, when its Ergo insulated water bottle was featured on “Good Morning America,” ABC’s morning show, in its weekly “Secret Deals and Steals” segment. The segment led to a big increase in sales, and the allotment for the promotion has sold out after a few days, Amabile said.
Correction: This story was updated to correct the amount of each purchase donated to OPS.

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