There were three times more water fountains in Ancient Rome than London local government provides today… and there is currently only one publicly available fountain for every 19,108 people.

The number of free water fountains and refill stations provided by councils and the Mayor of London stands at only 450. This dearth of water fountains is pushing consumers to buy single-use plastic water bottles when out and about, as they are often unable to find somewhere to fill their water bottles. This in turn is fuelling plastic pollution. 

To visualise this problem we have produced a ‘desert map' of London, ranking the councils in order of how many water fountains each provides to demonstrate the impact that expanding this availability would have:

With a massive 1.2 billion plastic bottles bought just in London every single year, greater availability of public drinking water fountains will provide better access to what should be a public good and help ditch the plastic in favour of filling up reusable bottles instead.