Rethinking Water Fountains

 

Woosh Water is  a new approach to the distribution of water in Israel. They come in the form of attractive water bottle refilling stations that now cover the city of Tal Aviv. The station dispenses cold filtered drinking water and will clean and sanitize your refillable bottle for you. The stations are free to use by anyone but offer additional benefits if you join the network. Joining can be done online quickly and easily. Once done you receive a key chain sensor to log in with when you refill your bottle. It will keep track of individually how much water has been consumed and how many plastic bottled have been saved as well as the collective numbers for all users. These statistics are displayed on screen when you log in.

I think this is a great and very effective plan to save plastic water bottles. People are drawn to and to want to interact with beautiful objectives. Woosh is beautifully designed and clearly has been thought through. I think they add aesthetically to the city and are a constant reminder to people to use their own refillable water bottle. The fact that is dispenses cold water is further influence to use the stations in hot climates like Israel. Thus these  

Woosh hopes the stations will be used in cities across the globe in the future. Here is a video further explaining the system: 

 What I wish Woosh would have done is incorporated a water station locator app like the WeTap app. This app relies on crowd sourcing to keep track of new fountains, removed fountains, and water fountains that need maintenance. It will even tell you the quality of the water, the condition of the fountain and allows for comments and pictures to be posted for each fountain by users.


This is a screen shot of the app

 I love the idea of this app. Water fountains are disappearing from our city landscape. I think  apps like this one and increasing new interest could influence cities to reinstall water fountains. It would certainly help save plastic water bottles and make it easier for people not to use them in the first place.


This is a picture of a very stylish water fountain you can find in the Fairhaven Village Green (behind Village Books)

There also used to be a octagon shaped water fountain on the corner of Cornwall and Kentucky (between Bellingham High School and the Catholic church.) but it had to be removed because it was being used as a garbage can. Which illustrates the point that its ultimately up to the people of a city whether water fountains and stations can work and whether we will be seeing more of them in the future. I personally hope that we do.