Last year, David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II was one of the most incredible programmes to grace our TV screens. After several spectacular episodes where new creatures and extraordinary new animal behaviours were revealed (along with some of the most stunning imagery ever seen of our oceans), he then went on to discuss how our wonderful blue planet is under threat from all kinds of pollution, particularly plastic waste of which tonnes and tonnes finds its way into our seas across the world each year.
So insightful was this last episode that Blue Planet II won this year’s “Impact Award” at the NTAs a few weeks back and Sir David gave a brilliant speech calling on everybody watching at home to “protect this beautiful world”.
Now, we all know that Bristol is a particularly green city and that we are already pretty hot on recycling and looking after our environment, however, we are also very proud to be home to the founders of Refill Bristol, a practical tap water scheme which was launched here in 2015 which aims to “make refilling your bottle as easy, convenient and cheap as possible by introducing refill points on every street”.
Refill Bristol has been rolled out across the city and now has over 200 refill points throughout the centre with plans to spread the scheme further afield into surrounding areas also. So how does it work? Participating cafes, bars, restaurants, museums…and numerous other businesses, simply put a sticker into their window so that you know you are welcome to pop in and fill up your bottle FOR FREE! They also have reusable bottles on offer saving not only a fortune on what you might otherwise pay for single-use plastic ones but also of course massively cutting down on the amount of plastic ending up in landfill or as litter (which here in the UK is estimated to be a whopping 800 plastic bottles per minute by the way).
Refill is an incredible scheme which is slowly being set up in new cities across the UK and is raising awareness of a great cause absolutely spectacularly. We have our reusable bottles at the ready and are proud to be joining the fight against marine pollution…check out Refill’s website here to see how you can help too!