Refill (no more plastic bottles of water)

Update on some actions done - I have emailed Ian from BID to answer some questions about it that he asked quite a while ago, and give a basic bit of information that he can send around to businesses.
I've also emailed Sarah Irving, who is our point of contact with City to Sea, and asked if we can get some more stickers sent over, and also get a web page set up on the Refill site. I asked her if she could point us to any information about the impact of Refill in terms of plastic.
I've set up a gmail password that we can use as a shared inbox for contacts, it's [email protected] and any of you can log into it with the password reFILL1t.

Thanks Oscar, sounds great. Very happy to help with signing up businesses in town/ Mill Road area when the stickers arrive and helping with water company bids if useful. Looking forward to getting cracking!

Hi everyone, here's an update about the Memorandum of Understanding, and some other things going on with refillable bottles, and finally a suggestion about holding an "action day" style session.

Memorandum Of Understanding - as we discussed before, we need to sign this document (MOU) between City To Sea and a Cambridge organisation, before we can get the window stickers and get on the Refill website. There are still some things that are unclear here, about which organisation should take this on.

Cambridge Sustainable Food - Gemma is happy to take on the role as coordinator and have CSF sign the MOU, as I understand it, but we will have to raise £10k to fund the role (one day a week). This is my personal preference, because the organisation and the person both seem so well suited. However there is no sign of the money turning up, and it is holding us up a bit. There is also a possibility of getting this funding from the city council, which also has some potential. However, the most likely pot of money to be available is the Sustainable City pot, which goes through a cycle that would normally make an award much later in the year. I have asked Rosy if we can work around that somehow by making a special award, so perhaps I'll hear back about that option.

Transition Cambridge - They are happy to be the organisation behind the MOU, and I or Seigo could be the local coordinator. So this is a viable option, and perhaps we should have 'pulled the trigger' on this one already. We'll need to talk a bit more about what timeline we could achieve, and how we can get more volunteers on board. The Transition AGM in October would be an opportunity to promote the scheme further, but we should ideally be getting stuff going in August.

Social Circular Economy - Seigo mentioned that his consultancy could be the organisation behind the MOU, which is a kind offer but I'd be concerned that it could tie the MOU very closely to him and make it trickier for someone else to take over in future (if needed). In a choice between this and Transition, I'd feel that Transition a better choice, but I've got a very biased perspective from being involved in Transition for so long.

Cambridge City Council - Perhaps one of the officers at the council is interested in being the organisation that signs the MOU? I'm waiting for clarification about this, I don't think it's likely.

There's a load of other stuff that's been happening as well, that supports the project:

Cambridge BID - have agreed to communicate with all shops in the city centre (within the BID area) and invite them to take part. One of the major new redevelopments in the area is apparently going to have a public water fountain in the shopping centre. And we've been offered the chance to run a market stall as one of the "night markets" if anyone actually wants to. The chair of BID is very keen on the scheme but didn't think that there would be many shops who would want the window stickers.

Cambridge Railway Station - have setup a refill point on the main platform. I haven't checked if it is on the app yet, and I don't think they're promoting the Refill app as far as I know.

South Cambridgeshire District Council - Cllr Pippa Heylings said she was going to try and get South Cambs council to support this, at a meeting last week, and I understand it was thoroughly endorsed. I wonder if they've been in touch with our regional coordinator yet? This is the area around Cambridge, which doesn't overlap with it geographically, but a lot of the people do overlap so it seems worth co-ordinating with them.

Action day - it would be quite good to go out and get a start on speaking to some shopkeepers and see if they're happy to be added to the app. We don't have to cover the city centre, but some streets just outside the centre would be good. I suggest we choose a day in one of the upcoming weekends, and spend about 3 or 4 hours visiting businesses to engage with them before having a wrap up session somewhere with a drink. Which dates could you do, if we were to do this? I can't do this Sunday afternoon, but the other bits of the weekend would be alright. Saturday 4th August seems like a good day to do it?

Best wishes,
Oscar

Just thought I should update you on Arjuna and refill ideas.

We have been looking into this for a while now and hope to have refill bottles ready for customers to buy in next few weeks. We're also looking into buying a Berkey water filter system to have outside shop for customers to refill their bottles. I think one thing that needs considering when it comes to shops is that a refill system has to suit the shop as much the customer, as it really isn't convenient for most shop workers to stop what they're doing to go refill customers' bottles at a click of the fingers (that really would go down badly especially in this heat!). Also, a system based in the street is obviously better for people with pushchairs, wheelchairs and bikes.

Hi Dave, following our conversation the other day I've found the person at the county council who is responsible for awarding licenses for these things, Andy Barham. I'm waiting for him to get back to me. I also saw this project in London which is pushing for water fountains there and has some information about typical costs and responsibilities involved: https://www.onelessbottle.org/fountainfund/

Hi Oscar
Thanks for this – really exciting and affordable! Be great if we could
convince the council to do something similar perhaps by asking
shops to pay for their own so that they could be spread through the city.
Or perhaps we try to convince the London scheme that
Cambridge is in fact a suburb...?!

Cheers
Dave

Arjuna
Wholefoods
Shop: 01223 364 845

There are probably enough commuters to London that you could make a good case for that! I think the council will support things like this when businesses are willing to do the heavy lifting, you'll set a great precedent and make it easier to persuade other businesses to do it too.

Hi everyone, following the discussion we had last month at the pub. I've decided to push ahead with the Refill campaign as a purely voluntary campaign because we haven't got anywhere with raising funding and the summer is going to end without getting many businesses online. So I've registered us with the national group by signing a Memorandum Of Understanding that commits us to a timeline of action and affiliation with Transition Cambridge. There will be a number of action days around the city to engage with businesses, starting with one this Saturday based around East Road. https://www.facebook.com/groups/29952459754/

Hi Oscar,

I'm free on saturday, where are you meeting everyone and what time are you starting.

Kind regards

Kim

Great Kim! We'll meet at 10am in the Espresso Library, you know where that is? On East Road. Then around 11am we'll go and speak to some businesses about the app. I think we'll probably find quite a few pubs and cafes that are ok with it.