Mobile refill station rental: how TNW replaced plastic bottles with 500 reusable ones

At TheNextWeb (TNW), one of Europe's largest tech conferences, attendees refilled their own bottles from a rented mobile water station instead of buying a new plastic one each time they got thirsty. Join the Pipe supplied the setup: an outdoor mobile refill cart on a two-day rental, alongside 500 printed Amsterdam City Bottles for attendees to keep.

The setup on site

The cart was parked outside TNW's business hall, branded with the conference's own signage next to Join the Pipe's City Water tap. Staff and visitors filled cups and bottles straight from the tap, cutting the pallets of bottled water that would otherwise be trucked in and binned after a single event day.

What a mobile refill station rental includes

Join the Pipe rents two mobile formats for events: the Mobile Tap and the Water Bar, both available to buy or rent with no minimum order quantity, so a single unit covers a one-day conference. Rental price covers the unit and a deposit. Water, transport and installation are arranged separately, and like all Join the Pipe event rentals it's available across Europe. Multi-day trade fairs and conferences typically add a branded bottle run (minimum 100 pieces for a custom print) so the giveaway keeps working as a refill habit after the event ends.

Why conferences rent a refill station instead of buying pallets of water

A refill or hydration station at a conference venue does one specific job: it replaces single-serving bottled water with a tap that visitors return to all day. That matters more than it used to. The EU's Single-Use Plastics Directive (2019/904) has pushed festival and conference organisers across Europe to cut disposable cups and bottles from their event floors, and a rented station is the fastest way to comply without owning hardware that sits idle eleven months a year.

The bottle: 99% sugarcane, not oil-based plastic

The Amsterdam City Bottle printed for TNW is made from 99% sugarcane-based bioplastic: chemically identical to conventional HDPE, but CO2-negative across its lifecycle instead of oil-based. It's Braskem "I'm green™" certified, BPA-free, EU food-contact compliant (EC 10/2011) and dishwasher-safe to 65°C, a detail worth knowing if a venue plans to wash and reuse the giveaway rather than treat it as disposable itself.

Every printed bottle Join the Pipe ships also funds one donated to a school water project in Africa, the foundation's Buy One Give One model. For a quote on a mobile refill station rental or a printed bottle run for your own event, see the event water & tap rental page or a related case at IMEX America's recurring trade-show setup.