National Refill Day is on Wednesday 19th June and is a public awareness campaign that helps prevent millions of single-use plastic bottles from polluting our streets and our oceans. On the day people are encouraged to carry a reusable water bottle and refill on the go.

The new drinking fountain has three water dispense areas: one for our four-legged friends, one for people and one so we can refill our water bottles.  

Lopes Edwards, a regular dog walker at Winton Rec said, “It’s great to have this drinking fountain fitted, our kids often play football here and I no longer have to bring refreshments for them. You can see how much Sol is enjoying the water too!”

The drinking fountain was funded by through the Bournemouth Local Improvement Fund. The fund provides money to be spent on projects recommended by local councillors in consultation with their communities. The Bournemouth Parks Foundation, a local charity dedicated to enhancing our parks, also donated to the project.

Councillor Simon Bull for Winton East ward commented, “I’m really pleased to see the water fountain installed at Winton Recreation Ground, especially as it’s being so well used by park users and their dogs. It’s a great way to encourage people to reduce their use of plastic – particularly with National Refill Day this week”.    

Cathi Farrer, Manager of the Bournemouth Parks Foundation said, “it’s brilliant to being able to fund another drinking fountain in one of our beautiful parks. We want to create networks of drinking fountains across Bournemouth’s parks to help reduce the number of throwaway plastic bottles people use and protect wildlife from plastic pollution. We’d love to install more drinking fountains in our parks across Bournemouth. If any companies would be interested in sponsoring a drinking fountain we’d love to speak to you.”

You can find out more about Bournemouth Parks Foundation’s project at https://www.bournemouthparksfoundation.org.uk/our-projects/doggie-drinkers-and-water-fountains/