Call to bring back water fountains to cut down on plastic waste

There are calls for towns and cities across the UK to install water fountains, in a bid to crack down on the millions of plastic bottles making their way into our rivers and oceans every year.

London's first public drinking fountain was built into the railings of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate Church in 1859 by the Quaker Samuel Gurney. Thousands of people turned out in Holborn to see it being unveiled.

Historian Emma Jones told Sky News: "Samuel Gurney was a philanthropist and he was really interested in temperance. He really wanted to keep people away from the public house. So providing free water was obviously one of the ways they thought they could achieve that."

Whilst in the nineteenth century, drinking fountains were introduced to wean people off alcohol, nowadays, it's hoped they could help to wean people off bottled water instead.

Since it was introduced in the 1980s water fountains have undoubtedly declined in popularity, as people are increasingly buying single-use plastic bottles.

Ms Jones said: "We've had a real growth in the bottled water market. There was a real fitness culture - aerobics, we had Jane Fonda's workout, selling masses of copies in 1982 and people wanted to be lycra-clad and swigging bottles of water and getting the body beautiful."

In Bristol the water fountain is now making a comeback. The environmental research centre, Eumonia, has installed and sponsored a fountain in the city centre and is calling on other businesses to do the same.

Consultant Adrian Gibbs told Sky News: "Drinking fountains encourage us to keep healthy and stay hydrated, they cut down on primary resources to reduce plastics and also emissions involved in creating plastic bottles, and by avoiding the use of disposable plastic packaging we avoid litter, which gets into our streams and oceans."

Bristol is now a refillable city, meaning hundreds of bars and cafes allow people to fill up their water bottles for free. There's even a Refill app, which originated in Bristol, but now has a following all over the world.

Natalie Fee, who set up the initiative, said: "Refill is all about helping people appreciate tap water and to help people realise that they don't have to buy single use plastic bottles when they're out and about. The UK is only recycling half of its plastics and a lot of those are escaping into waterways and seas."

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

It's hoped that encouraging people to once again use drinking fountains, rather than buying bottled water, will help to curb the problem.

Sky News launched its Sky Ocean Rescue campaign earlier this year aimed at reducing the amount of plastic waste that ends up in the world's seas.

:: You can find out more about the Sky Ocean Rescue campaign and how to get involved at www.skyoceanrescue.com