Monday 28 February 2011

Tapwater.org

We are now a filling station for Tapwater.org!

Who or what is tapwater.org? Tapwater.org is an organisation that encourages local businesses to join the tap water revolution and become free filling stations. Their website http://www.tapwater.org/ can point you in the direction of the closest station in your area.


So what is a filling station you may ask? A filling station is a cafe, shop, pub....or climbing wall.....who provides tap water for free. Any member of the public can come in to the centre (or any filling station) with a re-useable bottle and fill it with tap water at no charge.

As the Castle already has drinking water facilities on site in the shape of our water fountains dotted around the centre, it was very easy for us to just join up and we're more than happy to provide both our customers and the general public with free tap water. And we got a free sticker!

What's the point? In an age where buying bottled water has become the culture, maybe it's time to start asking ourselves why. Why do we feel the need to buy a product which is essentially free in every home? We've been brainwashed (excuse the pun) into thinking tap water tastes bad, is full of impurities and is not good for us. Amazing then to find out a lot of bottled water comes from the same source......

If you have a minute or two to spare, please take a look at 'The Story of Bottled Water'....it's quite an eye opener! http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/

We can all reduce both our spending and carbon footprint by switching to tap water and by creating these filling stations we can hopefully encourage people to take advantage of this free service and stop buying bottled water.

We all love a fact or two...so here you go!

Did you know?
  • Bottled water costs 500 times more than tap water
  • 1 in 5 people are too embarrassed to ask for tap water in a restaurant
  • The average person drinks 37.6 litres of bottled water a year
  • 2.7 million tonnes of plastic are used to bottle water each year
  • 22 million tonnes of bottled water are transferred from country to country each year
  • 3 our of 4 plastic water bottles are still not recycled
  • Bottled water has a carbon footprint up to 300 times higher than tap water