Parched City (25 page)

In 2007, after Sustain’s report was published, an entrepreneur contacted Waste Watch’s Maria Andrews about his Hydrachill product, a tap water vending machine.
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Waste Watch was situated in Shoreditch just down the hill from Sustain’s Islington offices. As a plastics expert, Nick Davies might have seemed an unlikely ally to Waste Watch, however he had designed a bottle
specifically with tap-water-refilling in mind. His bottle tackled a flaw in the mouthpieces of other refillable bottle designs which were a choking hazard for some user groups. However, it was not the bottle but how it could be refilled that caused Nick Davies to contact Waste Watch. He had recently convinced Water UK to have a prototype of his ‘Hydrachill’ vending machine installed at its headquarters. The Hydrachill mirrors the design aesthetic and proportions of a common soft drinks vending unit, yet it plugs into a mains water supply to ‘vend’ filtered drinking water. When Maria Andrews heard about the tap water vending machine, she was hooked: ‘You can talk about recycling, you can talk about re-use but the word
reduce
is really hard [to show].’ As 2007 progressed, Waste Watch collaborated with Hydrachill, Water UK and Thames Water to promote the installation of ten trial vending machines in public spaces, funded by the latter. The project managers besieged London’s local authorities with presentations about how Hydrachills could reduce waste. One organisation was pinpointed strategically as the most attractive, high profile partner for hosting the trial units: London Underground. Given the annual posters that appear in Tube stations during hot summers advising the public to carry bottled water, the proposal seemed to match a gap in Transport for London’s service. Curiously, the organisation was not cooperative. Maria Andrews explained in March 2010 that, in her experience, ‘if you try and talk to Transport for London which we‘ve done on a number of different occasions, they asked us to do a feasibility study on where their water mains are — they were saying it would cost us 50k to go and find where the water access is’. Rather than see the proposal as an opportunity, Andrews felt that Hydrachill was treated as any other commercial marketing proposal or sales venture: ‘If I was a franchise, say I was Burger King, I would have Transport for London running around after me.’ What further frustrated Andrews was that the Greater London Authority’s collaboration with Thames Water for the
London on Tap
promotion campaign should surely have compelled its transport department to engage with a prominent Mayoral strategy: Ken Livingstone’s, at that time. The Hydrachill sales team managed to secure two sites in Hammersmith Bus Station, with some sign of a willing Transport for London outpost, and the Museum of London. However, the planned October 2009 launch was stalled when the Chief Executive Officer at Thames Water changed. Hydrachill was not infecting everyone with the same enthusiasm as its promoters.

Aspects of Hydrachill might not persuade ardent environmentalists, let alone Transport for London officials, whose job description does not stretch to facilitating tap water promotion projects. Visually, the vending machine unit is not elegant. The advertising hoarding façades may attract users through scale and strident colours, however the unit’s dimensions seem to exceed its main functions of cooling and serving piped water. A third function of dispensing branded refill bottles is one defence of a larger bulk for storage, but it is the aesthetic of vending as a design concept that seems an uneasy counterpoint to the commodification of drinking water. There is another reason for the vending likeness: Hydrachill’s promoters proposed that a charge of 20 pence per refill would fund the project’s continuation. For Sustain employee Christine Haigh, this sent out a confused message about the pro-tap water zeitgeist amongst environmentalists, about which she was blunt: ‘Either it is free, or it is not.’
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Ideologically similar voluntary organisations can rapidly dissociate themselves from each other on the question of how best to achieve their goals. By design, Hydrachill importantly addressed the public space provision issue, albeit with the need for shelter and electricity. Sustain raised the spatial aspect of bottled water demand in its 2008 publication,
The Taps Are Turning:
‘Streets, parks, bus and train stations, museums and galleries, for example are woefully poorly served with public
drinking fountains. Given how difficult it is to get access to the public water supply in public places, it is small wonder that people have opted to carry bottles of water with them.’
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The report’s seemingly innocuous list of spaces in reality throws open a breadth of categories and reveals the complexities inherent in proposing where or by what means public water might flow freely. Another issue that the report raised also plays an important role in the tap versus bottled water equation in public life: political will. Sustain’s report patted Ken Livingstone on the back for his administration’s discouragement of bottled water provision at meetings. In 2008, his tap water commitment became patently high profile when the Greater London Authority collaborated with Thames Water.
London on Tap
was born. It was a campaign, the like of which had not been mounted since the post-privatisation years to market the capital’s tap water.

Tarting up the Tap

London on Tap
was launched in February 2008, with a specific remit ‘to promote tap water in London’s restaurants, cafés and pubs’.
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The campaign’s first press release was timed to coincide with the BBC’s broadcast of a Panorama programme provocatively entitled,
Bottled Water: Who Needs It?
Journalist Tim Heap’s investigative piece on the global bottled water industry presented stark images of environmental devastation, such as the carcass of a bird on a Dorset beach whose stomach showed that it had ingested ‘nurdles’. These minute particles of plastic waste represented the environmental pollution caused by plastics generally, including disposable water, and other drink, bottles. The film, coupled with the
London on Tap
campaign, signalled that the anti-bottled water zeitgeist was not confined to environmental activists on the fringe, but that it was an issue endorsed by the water industry itself, the BBC and the Mayor of London. Anti-bottled-water activism had gone mainstream.
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From the outset,
London on Tap
was openly anti-bottled-water,
with supporters such as the Green Party in Livingstone’s cohort at City Hall. The campaign focused on the message of de-stigma-tising requests for tap water in London’s restaurants. As Livingstone was quoted: ‘My message is very simple: don’t be embarrassed to ask for tap water when you eat out. You will save money and help save the planet.’
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Thames Water adopted the quality assurance stance, when the company’s then Chief Executive, David Owens, stated: ‘Luckily in London we have probably the best drinking water in the world…in a recent independent taste test rated higher than 20, more expensive, bottled brands.’
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He may well have been referring to Waste Watch’s ‘Tap Water Challenge’, from which Maria Andrews reported that 90% of tasters could not distinguish between bottled and tap water (apparently the secret was to chill the water).

Designer bottled water emperor’s-new-clothes effect was alluded to in
London on Tap’s
competition for an ‘iconic carafe’ to turn diners on to tap water. The competition was judged by a high profile panel, including the Crafts Council’s director Rosy Greenlees, architect Zaha Hadid and the environmentalist Tony Juniper. By the time the competition’s winning design was announced, in December 2008, Boris Johnson had been elected Mayor of London. Despite party political differences, Johnson picked up where Livingstone had left off. In fact, his enthusiasm for tap water soon became as renowned as his love of the bicycle. Announcing the winning carafe design, the Mayor commented: ‘Many congratulations to Neil Barron, who has created Tap Top, a top-notch water carafe for London. I am sure it will be snapped up by businesses and organisations across the capital in order to make tap water an easier choice. At a time when we are all tightening our belts, choosing tap water over bottled water makes more sense than ever, whilst also helping people to cut their carbon footprint.’
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Visually, the industrial designer’s winning carafe mimicked the familiar contours of a standard kitchen tap,
but with dimensions stretched to the scale of a wine bottle. Like the top of the tap that one habitually turns, the carafe’s neck has four ridges to grip, suggesting this familiar ‘tap top’ aesthetic whilst performing the more functional role of trapping ice in the carafe. With a choice of clear, bottle green or topaz-like blue, the carafe’s elegant design might have enticed even the finest of the capital’s restaurants to buy into the
London on Tap
campaign.

However, the plan for the carafe to become as common a sight on restaurant tables as the tap in one’s kitchen has not transpired. Resources lavished on the initial campaign were perhaps not sustained for the project management of the ambitious scheme’s next phase. Media partner to the campaign, the
Evening Standard
only covered the launch and the winner’s announcement despite the fact that its editorial position is now firmly in the anti-bottled water camp. Perhaps there was no more news to relay about the 10,000 carafes that were released to infect restauranteurs’ enthusiasm. The only eatery
London on Tap
parades its association with in press releases is the celebrity chef Aldo Zilli’s chain (Zilli also happened to be one of the judges). One reason for the reluctant uptake could be that restaurants which encourage tap water consumption already have their own jugs, so they are consequently not willing to pay £120 for a box of designer carafes.
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Given the economic climate at the end of the Noughties first decade, restaurant owners would have to be pretty ardent environmentalists to both invest in the carafes and actively dissuade customers from buying bottled water. The product is by no means a benign profit issue. It is true that many of London’s trendiest eateries do earnestly advocate tap water as a more ethical and sustainable food culture has taken root in recent times. For instance, Emma Reynolds, the dynamic young manager of a successful trio of sushi restaurants prides herself on the company’s commitment to source fish from only avowedly sustainable sources. The same sensibility led to her trialling the second branch of Tsuru, when it first opened, as a bottled-water-free
eatery. Many customers did not take to the lack of drinking water choice. Consequently, Reynolds now ensures that chilled tap water is always available to customers, but only as an alternative to the ubiquitous fridge stocked with bottled water. Some figures she quotes reveal why many businesses might not be so keen to push the tap over the bottle: ‘We pay 30p for a 500ml bottle of water, charge £1 and pay 20% V.A.T. on the sale, so we make 50p per bottle.’
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It is a persuasive profit margin for businesses weighing up environmental sustainability commitments, green kudos and consumer desires.
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Twenty-first century philanthropy

The environmental zeitgeist in the restaurant industry that
London on Tap
hoped to connect with bubbled up elsewhere in 2009: outdoors, in Hyde Park’s grade-one-listed environs. A local jogger noticed the world famous park’s lack of hydration facilities. That jogger also happened to be a property developer involved in the largest regeneration project in central London in the late Noughties: King’s Cross. Michael Freeman was also a trustee of the charitable foundation associated with the Royal Parks. When he proposed bestowing a gift for his neighbourhood park, the idea of a drinking fountain arose. Sara Lom, the Royal Parks Foundation’s Chief Executive, recalls how she was cautious about matching the gift with the needs of Hyde Park’s users and managers. Following consultation with the park’s management, the project was welcomed as a public service and as a means of tackling the vast volume of plastic waste from water bottles discarded in the park. Ensuring the gift’s actual benefit to park users and managers was dependent on an appropriate location. The chosen spot near Cumberland Gate, at the Marble Arch end of the park was identified as a place where the paths of riders, runners and walkers intersected. A small plaque not far from where the new fountain would be installed marked the spot where an ostentatious nineteenth-century drinking
fountain — sponsored by the Maharajah of Vizianagram — once stood.
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Like the Maharajah’s offering to the Royal Park, this object would also be a unique artwork, though with a more muted aesthetic sensibility.

Freeman Family Fountain, Hyde Park, 2010. Author’s own photograph.

Sculptor David Harber translated Michael Freeman’s £30,000 donation into a globe of mirror-polished, marine-grade stainless steel.
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At 1.2 metres in diameter, the shiny plinth-mounted object is visible from a distance to approaching joggers.
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If one stands close by, a runner’s laboured breathing can be heard as she or he runs on the spot whilst sipping from the fountain, even steaming up its mirrored surfaces on wintry days. At close quarters, Harber’s nod to the hydrological cycle can be appreciated in the subtle shades of the fountain’s bluey-green petals. During the sculpture’s creation, the Royal Parks Foundation’s consultation also involved working with young people from nearby St Vincent’s Primary School who, as Sara Lom enthusiastically recounts worked on ‘a project about why plastic bottles were bad and what they would want to see in a fountain’. Their ideas were
fed back to David Harber, so it is no coincidence that young users of the fountain today can be observed benefitting from the design’s three drinking spouts positioned at various heights. A fourth bottle-refilling spout is a notably twenty-first century design feature. The fountain’s unveiling in September 2009 signalled the start of a London fountain renaissance, at least an outdoor one, when it was heralded as the first new drinking fountain to grace the Royal Parks in thirty years.
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