09 June 2009

A Watered Alliance

Aussie design company are behind move away from bottled water.

Design company Street Furniture Australia (SFA) are part of the Bottled Water Alliance (BWA) – with Do Something! and filtered water supplier Culligan Water – aiming to reduce the waste created by the bottled water industry by bringing fresh filtered water to the streets.

The program involves installing water fountains and taps that provide fresh filtered water to the residents and visitors to Manly, Sydney. This in turn should encourage people to buy less bottled water – the plastic from which generally ends up in landfill or as litter after a single use.

Street Furniture Australia won a tender to supply their unique ‘Fountain Head’ drinking fountains for the project and the BWA have since installed six packages – of fountain and tap stations – around Manly with plans to install another 14.

‘Fountain Head’ was designed by Duncan Trevor Wilson and developed by a team of architects, industrial designers and SFA engineers.

“‘Fountain Head’ is a direct response to problems evident in existing bubblers, such as poor hygiene, unreliability, vandalism and poor disabled access,” says SFA’s June Lee Boxsell.

“Through intelligent design, ‘Fountain Head’ has made drinking water safer in the public environment.”

The BWA program is said to have reduced Manly Council’s garbage collection volume by 30-40% and prevented the purchase of around 150,000 litres of bottle water – potentially 250,000 plastic bottles that may have ended up as litter or landfill.

“BWA’s mission is to reduce the use of single-serve plastic bottles by 20% by 2011 and SFA is dedicated to achieving this goal. Our message is: ‘refill, not landfill’,” says Boxsell.

Street Furniture Australia
streetfurniture.com

Bottled Water Alliance
bottledwateralliance.com