Refreshment focuses on the water dispenser/cooler, office coffee service and vending sectors, while also taking an in-depth look into products for vending from bottled water and drinks, to snacks and confectionery. It also focuses on hydration, health and wellness, new technologies and environmental and social responsibility issues.
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Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) has launched a new initiative to reduce single-use water bottles by installing hydration stations at two high-traffic areas in Central Manchester Hospital.
This project, which is the first of its kind in the UK public sector, was developed in collaboration with MFT, Honest (the creator of the UK’s first reusable bottle made from locally sourced single-use bottles), and MFT’s facilities management partner, Sodexo.
The stations, located in the main atriums of the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital and St Mary’s Hospital, provide free water refills for visitors and staff using reusable bottles. In addition, both units offer the option to upgrade tap water to ‘triple-filtered super chilled water’ at £0.45 or carbonated water at £0.55.
Damian Sleep, business director at Sodexo Health & Care, said: “We are committed to doing all we can to reduce the use of single-use plastics and this new initiative will help encourage visitors and staff to move away from buying single-use bottled water to reduce the amount of plastic in circulation”.
“This will only be successful if we make it easy to refill bottles and create long-term behavioural change by increasing the uptake of reusables so that we can then eliminate the sale of single-use plastic water bottles. This change represents a pioneering move on a site that typically has around 15,000 people on it daily.”
Honest’s sales and marketing manager, Georgia Bell, added: “Each 500ml water refill eradicates, on average, 12g of single-use plastic. During the six months that the hydration stations have been in use, almost 50kg of plastic waste has been avoided.”
“Considering that more than 2.5 billion units of bottled water are sold through UK retail outlets each year, there is an opportunity to eradicate 34,000 tonnes of single-use plastic, providing that water refill stations are in greater abundance than they are today. This is one small step that will facilitate this change”
The stations also offer Honest bottles for purchase for those without a reusable bottle on hand.
