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Eco-friendly people are bringing their own bottles. The question is, where to fill them?
Public facilities for refilling empty water bottles are scarce in the capital, posing a separate challenge for eco-friendly residents.
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Students line up to refill their bottles with drinking water at Nusantara Multimedia University in Serpong, Banten, recently. The university provides free drinking water in an effort to reduce students’ dependency on water in single-use plastic bottles. (JP/Narabeto Korohama)
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s concerns rise about the growing waste in Jakarta, many residents are attempting to minimize contributing to the problem by bringing their own reusable water bottles and buying fewer bottles of bottled water to reduce waste from single-use plastics.
However, their eco-friendly efforts have met with a troublesome challenge: the lack of public facilities for refilling their water bottles.
Akh Kamali Hidayat, a 25-year-old office worker from Tangerang, said he was unable to locate any drinking fountains for refilling his water bottle.
“I know Jakarta has several drinking fountains, but I've never refilled my water bottle at drinking fountains because I don’t know where they are located,” he said on Wednesday.
Kamal said he bought a 1-liter reusable water bottle so he would not run out of water at work or during the commute to his office.
“I fill my water bottle at home and refill it at the water dispenser in my office. Although it’s heavy to carry around, I intentionally bought a large water bottle so I would never run out of water during my trip to the office,” he said.
Like Kamal, 24 year-old housewife Fitri Anggraeni from Depok is among those who are making an effort to reduce buying bottled water for environmental and financial reasons. Almost every day, Fitri fills two reusable bottles with infused water – fruits, vegetables and herbs immersed in cold water – for her and her husband.
