Across the country a bottled water refill and re-use campaign is being rolled out in many major towns and cities. Recently, Glastonbury have implemented a site-wide ban on the sales of plastic bottle at the 2019 festival with many other festivals and gatherings to follow suit. In the UK we get through 8bn single-use water bottles per year – expensive to produce and even more expensive to the environment. Surely, this is a waste of resources both financially and ecologically? – leading scientists, economists and environmentalists seem to think so.
Refill and re-use movement
There are many towns and cities that have already signed up to the bottled water refill and re-use movement scheme. It is a free tap water initiative that has been designed to reduce the pollution from single-use plastic bottles and promote hydration. In these cities and towns there is never any need to buy single-use water bottle providing you have a suitable drinks container to hand to refill and re-use.
List of towns and cities where bottled water refill and re-use scheme is already in place:
- Bristol
- London
- Brecon Beacons
- Durham and North East
- Dumfries and Galloway
- Cornwall
- Dorset
- Devon
- Brighton and Hove
- New Forest
- St Albans
- Henley on Thames
- Bicester and Banbury
- Hunstanton
- Bath
- Bradford on Avon
- Chippenham
Environmental concerns
With recent emphasis being drawn to environmental concerns regarding the amount of plastics that enter the Earth’s oceans. It is no surprise that leading environmental campaigners have decided to focus on single-use water bottles and back the bottled water refill and re-use campaign. David Attenborough’s filming of Blue Planet II has included evidence that plastic islands are forming in our oceans that release harmful toxins into the water system. In one of the scenes an albatross can be seen feeding plastic to her chicks. The biggest concerns for our oceans at present is plastics and climate change. Although we may not be able to immediately change the climate we can stop using single-use water bottles and make a vital difference – especially if we all take part in utilising the bottled water refill and re-use campaign.
What is likely to happen in the future?
We have been aware for a while that plastics are polluting our world’s oceans. Recently images seen from space of a huge floating island known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch have been loaded onto social media and the news. Studies have now found it to be larger in size than Greenland – unfortunately, it is a very sorry state of affairs for marine life in general.
Currently, many marine mammals and birds are struggling with a build-up of plastics internally. More recently, microplastics have been raised as a concern – entering the food chain through ingestion by fish that we consume. These current issues WILL only get worse if we do not take steps urgently to slow the process down. By 2050 if the current rate of plastic use continues the ocean will contain more plastic than fish. It is important that we all try to make small changes and one simple way is to become providers and users of the bottled water refill and re-use campaign.
How can you help?
It’s really simple, we can all take steps to slow down plastics entering our oceans. The first major step we can take is to STOP buying single-use plastic bottles and become part of the bottled water refill and re-use campaign.
Drinking water
The humble drink of water is available to us in every building we enter schools, colleges and offices so why are we buying so many bottles of water per year? Why aren’t more businesses taking part in the bottled water refill and re-use campaign? Is it better for our health to consume bottled water, in the UK? I think not and as for buying huge amounts of bottled water when we have so many points of mains water supplies is beyond my belief. In my eyes, it’s a no brainer that more local businesses should be taking part in the bottled water refill and re-use campaign.
Mains-fed water coolers
Recent years have seen the movement from bottled water coolers to mains-fed water coolers, where the mains water supply is utilised and then filtered, tasting identical to bottled water. Filtered water machines are in most cases more cost effective than the old type bottled water coolers. Due to a worldwide cut down on plastic products it probably won’t be too long before the bottled water coolers are phased out. This could present a problem for many businesses that rely on their water solution being supplied in this way.
Here at The Thirst Alternative Ltd we take the environment extremely seriously and made the decision to only provide mains-fed water solutions where possible. Why not make a difference to our planet today and take part in the bottled water refill and re-use campaign? Feel free to browse our products here.