Restoring water fountains to minimize plastic waste


There are towns and cities throughout the UK to set up water fountains, in a quote to punish the countless plastic bottles making their way into our rivers and oceans every year.

London’s very first public drinking water fountain was developed into the railings of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate Church in 1859 by the Quaker Samuel Gurney. Countless people ended up in Holborn to see it being revealed.

Historian Emma Jones informed Sky News: “Samuel Gurney was a benefactor and he was truly thinking about temperance. He wished to keep people far from the general public home. So supplying complimentary water was clearly among the methods they believed they might attain that.”

Whilst in the 19th century, drinking water fountains were presented to wean people off alcohol, nowadays, it’s hoped they might help to wean people off mineral water rather.

Since it was presented in the 1980s water fountains have unquestionably decreased in appeal, as people are progressively purchasing single use plastic bottles.

Ms Jones stated: “We’ve had a genuine development in the mineral water market. There was a genuine fitness culture – aerobics, we had Jane Fonda’s exercise, offering masses of copies in 1982 and people wished to be lycra-clad and swigging bottles of water and getting the body stunning.”

In Bristol the water fountain is now picking up. The ecological research centre, Eumonia, has set up and sponsored a water fountain in the city centre and is getting in touch with other services to do the exact same.

Expert Adrian Gibbs informed Sky News: “Drinking water fountains motivate us to keep healthy and remain hydrated, they reduced main resources to lower plastics as well as emissions associated with producing plastic bottles, and by preventing making use of non reusable plastic product packaging we prevent litter, which enters our streams and oceans.”

Bristol is now a refillable city, implying numerous bars and coffee shops permit people to fill their water bottles totally free. There’s even a Refill app, which came from Bristol, today has a following all over the world.

Natalie Fee, who established the effort, stated: “Refill is everything about assisting people value faucet water and to assist people understand that they do not need to purchase single use plastic bottles when they’re out and about. The UK is just recycling half of its plastics and a great deal of those are leaving into waterways and seas.”

Practically 36 million plastic bottles are purchased in the UK every day. Less than half are recycled and some can take 450 years to break down when they enter into our oceans.

It’s hoped that motivating people to as soon as again use drinking water fountains, instead of purchasing mineral water, will help to suppress the issue.