On 14/03/2020 17:45, Philip Barnes wrote:
They do seem very secretive about the locations of these outlets, there
appears to be no indication on their website even beyond there may be
one somewhere in this area.
They came to the council that I sit on to ask for grant funding to get
the scheme up and running in our area. One of the objections raised at
the time was the lack of transparency around the scheme, and in
particular the fact that if we did fund it, we appeared to be locking
ourselves into a proprietary system if we wanted to promote it. Although
a small amount of funding was approved, I suspect that it will not be
if/when they come back to us for more. It does, unfortunately, seem to
have more the feel of a device to sell branded water bottles than a
genuine public service.
As it stands it does not appear to be a viable quarterly project. We
have no indication of how common these places are, or their geographical
spread meaning it is not a project all mappers can participate in.
I would disagree with this. I think that an observation-based database
of establishments offering free water is, potentially, very useful. But
it needs a certain critical mass to work, and it needs the help of
people who can act as local observers. It seems to me that the OSM
community is a good place to find that.
If we do come up with an agreed tagging system, I'd be happy to add tags
for all the establishments in my town that I know offer this service.
And I could do that purely by observation; I don't have the Refill app
or any other insight into their database, so there's no danger of adding
non-free data to OSM. I'm sure that there are plenty of other people up
and down the country who would be in a similar position.
Also are these bottles just another 'single use' 'bag for life >
Like bags for life, their reuse is heavily dependent on them being
remembered next time, and most people forget to take them, or leave home
not realising they will even need them.
People are beginning to get more used to doing that, though. A lot of
coffee shop chains offer a discount for people bringing a re-usable cup.
Waitrose gives customers free coffee if they have a re-usable cup. So
the principle is taking hold.
Mark
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