When it comes to seawater in the UK, more than 95% of UK bathing beaches are safe for swimming. While this is a vast improvement and great news for locals and visitors, all is not perfect.
The European Environment Agency has raised a red flag, claiming that UK bathing water ranks next to last in the EU beach table. The UK pumped thousands of gallons of untreated effluent into various seaside areas well into 1998, which has resulted in the Environment Agency rating only 65% of UK beaches as excellent compared with 89% of Spain’s beaches and 91% of Italy’s beaches.
While UK drinking water is considered very good and healthy to drink, there are still some problems such as chlorine by-products and fluoride (both carcinogenic toxins) in much of the water and both pharmaceutical and recreational drugs such as oestrogen and cocaine being found in the water.
So what do you do when you are not at home or in the office and in reach of your water cooler on which you have come to depend on for pure, great-tasting drinking water? Purchasing bottled water can become very dear and there are no guarantees that the bottle actually contains what it says as there are many unscrupulous companies that bottle ordinary tap-water and sell it for a fortune under a sexy label.
The Refill scheme, which started in Bristol, is spreading. Businesses in Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire, for instance, have been asked to place a blue water drop Refill sticker in their shop windows if they are willing to refill water bottles for free. Most of the businesses have cheerfully gone along with this request and this is great news for both humans and the environment as it means sweetened, carbonated drinks being consumed and less single-use water bottles dumped in landfills poisoning the environment.
Get bottled water coolers and mains water coolers from Living-Water.
