Heat Wave Advice: If you must travel make sure you know where to find free drinking water

As UK health agencies release warnings over this weekend’s heatwave, City to Sea, the charity behind the award-winning Refill app has issued advice on how to find free drinking water when out and about. The award-winning Refill app maps over 30,000 water refill points around the UK, with 25,955 refill points in England alone.

The charity is urging the public to follow medical advice issued after last summer’s scorching heatwave and stay hydrated and stay out of the sun. Acknowledging that many however will need to still be out and about City to Sea is calling on people to follow advice from Ambulance Services, Councils, and Mayors calling for people to download the Refill App to help find their nearest water fountains or places to get free water on the go. Already over 500,000 people have downloaded the app.

The Refill app maps hundreds of thousands of “refill stations” around the world – places you can refill your water bottle for free. Major high-street brands such as Costa Coffee, Greggs and Morrisons supermarket have all signed up to offer free drinking water along with hundreds of National Trust and English Heritage properties. The free drinking points are marked by blue stickers that cafes have put up in their windows.

As well as helping Brits stay hydrated, the app also helps people save on their plastic. The Refill campaign saves over 100 million plastic bottles from entering our waste stream every year by helping consumers find free refills instead of having to buy single-use plastic bottles.

City to Sea, the charity behind the Refill app, estimates that if 1 in 10 Brits refilled just once a week around 340 million plastic bottles a year would be saved.

Steve Hynd, City to Sea’s Policy Manager commented saying, “This weekend is the first health warning in the UK because of hot weather but I am sure it won’t be the last of the summer. We are seeing more and more extreme weather and Brits need to get wise about how to stay safe in the scorching sun. If you have to be out and about make sure you carry a water bottle with you and download the Refill app so you know where to refill it. Stay safe and stay hydrated. We’re lucky to have some of the best quality tap water in the world in the UK and the Refill app enables you to enjoy this while staying safe and avoiding environmentally damaging single-use plastic bottles.”

The health advice comes in the week leading up to World Refill Day (16^th June), a Global Day of Action to prevent plastic pollution and help people live with less waste. Millions of people around the world will be picking up their water bottles to help prevent plastic pollution. City to Sea, the organisation behind the campaign, is calling on the public to ‘choose to reuse’ by making small changes to their everyday routines and switching from single-use to refill & reuse.