Reusable bottles for council crews

Frontline council crews given reusable drinks bottles to help cut down on single-use plastic.

Dacorum Borough Council is on a mission to help cut down single-use plastic throughout the borough – this means firstly leading by example.

The manual jobs that council operatives do is thirsty work. Not only this, but as they are also based in their vehicles for the majority of their shifts, this increases the likelihood of them purchasing single-use items throughout the day.

This month, all frontline operatives from the Waste Services and Clean, Safe and Green departments have been given their own reusable drinks bottles to help them cut down on the amount of single-use bottles they produce.

These reusable drinks bottles have been provided free of charge to approximately 1000 crew members in Hertfordshire by WasteAware, the Hertfordshire Waste Partnership.

Last summer, Dacorum worked alongside WasteAware to launch Refill Hertfordshire, a scheme to encourage people to carry reusable water bottles and fill them up on-the-go. Public places such as cafés, restaurants and pubs can register as ‘Refill Stations’ and display a round, blue Refill sticker – this invites all to fill up their water bottles with free tap water, whether they are a customer or not. Following a council initiative encouraging local businesses to sign up, there are now over 150 Refill Stations throughout Dacorum.

Crew members have been encouraged to use these Refill Stations throughout the day.

Portfolio Holder for Environment Sustainability and Regulatory Services, Councillor Alan Anderson, said: ‘In the UK, we use 13 billion plastic bottles every year, that’s including all fizzy drinks, milk and toiletry bottles. A staggering 60% of these are just disposable water bottles! That’s 7.7 billion bottles a year which could be avoided if we simply used our reusable bottles instead.’

He went on to add: ‘Refilling a reusable bottle with tap water is around 500 – 1000 times cheaper than buying bottled water – so drinking tap water instead of buying a bottle of drink is a great way to save money! I am so pleased that by providing these bottles we are not only helping our crews, but helping the planet too.’

For more information on Refill or cutting down single-use plastic in your daily life, visit www.dacorum.gov.uk/reusables.