Forward-thinking Bath businesses are being urged to sign up for a water bottle refill scheme and help cut down on the use of single-use plastic bottles.
Refill is a national, practical tap water campaign that aims to make refilling your bottle as easy, convenient and cheap as possible by introducing refill points on every street.
Bath and North East Somerset Council is supporting the Refill scheme and its café at the One Stop shop in Lewis House, in Manvers Street, is the first council venue to be added as a refill station.
About 50 businesses in Bath have also signed up and stickers are appearing in their shops and cafes promoting the scheme which also uses an app to help you find the Refill Stations and collect reward points every time you refill.
Refill Bath co-ordinator Vipul Patel, is working with volunteers to promote the campaign aimed at reducing plastic pollution and promoting health hydration by making refilling a bottle of water easy.
Recycling your bottles is good but reducing the number you use is even better – here in the UK an estimated 800 plastic bottles a minute are either ending up in a landfill or as litter, which too often makes its way into our waterways and out to sea.*
Councillor Bob Goodman (Conservative Combe Down) cabinet member for development and neighbourhoods, said: “We welcome this scheme because it is part of a commitment to discourage and hopefully eradicate single-use plastic bottles which we all know are a significant environmental issue. It is great that already around 50 Bath businesses have signed up to provide free tap water for anyone who wants to refill their bottles and I hope many more will join the Refill scheme.”
In the UK, we use a staggering 36 million plastic bottles every day – that’s 13 billion a year – enough to go around the world 31 times – but we recycle only 58% of them.
There are now more than 5,700 Refill points around the UK. For more information about the scheme and to find out about the app go to
https://www.refill.org.uk and as RefillBath on Twitter and Facebook
Find out more about plastic www.bathnes.gov.uk/plastic
