23 Aug 2011

Where are Stroud's drinking fountains?

Last year I blogged about drinking water fountains in our parks - see here - well while I was away earlier this month a new campaign was launched to improve the public’s access to free drinking water.

The ‘Find-a- Fountain’ project has been developed by Guy Jeremiah and is now part of the 1859 Drinking Fountain Association. It aims to record all publicly accessible drinking water fountains across the UK via a specially designed interactive website - starting a renaissance in the use of drinking fountains in order to reduce the UK’s reliance on inefficiently produced bottled water, and lessen its negative impact on the environment. This blog has covered lots on the horrors of bottled water....the average person in the UK buys 85 bottles of water a year and a typical local authority in the UK has to dispose of up to 10 million bottles a year, at a significant cost to tax payers.

Once the fountains are recorded they hope to then facilitate the installation of new drinking water fountains around the country and the restoration of old fountains which have fallen into disrepair

The www.findafountain.org has so far logged many hundreds of the nation’s drinking water fountains and is now calling on volunteers to upload details of their own local facilities or free public drinking water sources. Already three of Stroud's best cafes are listed please consider adding more to the website....

1 comment:

Charles Roffey and Fred O said...

An excellent initiative, Philip. I was just reflecting earlier this week how civilised it is in Turkey to have so many drinking fountains. Alas, I fear that many people in the UK might not treat such places with due respect as they go out on their binge drinking sessions.