Safe, drinkable tap water is a privilege much of the world doesn’t have. While solutions like refillable purified water tanks or simply boiling water exist for households and businesses, consuming water while out and about usually involves single-use plastic. After picking up thousands of these bottles on beaches, we decided to create the Trash Hero Water Refill Network in 2014: a simple way to prevent plastic bottle waste, by bringing together businesses willing to offer free water refills to customers.

We encourage businesses to sign up to the network by offering a free listing on our online refill map and promoting their efforts on local social media channels. To support the move to refill for both the businesses and their customers, Trash Hero optionally provides high quality stainless steel water bottles at cost price. By selling the bottles to customers with a small profit, the cost of providing the water is covered. Customers benefit from having a cool reusable bottle and free refills through the network for life. 

But who are the businesses to agree to support this scheme? And what motivated them to join?

Meet our refill point partners 

Four business owners in Indonesia with four different entry points. For Tiwi at Toko Organis in Bandung, West Java, it started after experiencing frustration as a thirsty customer. “Why do we provide a refill point? Because we ourselves felt helped when refill points started showing up around Bandung,” she says. She’d felt the gap firsthand.

For Berdhi, offering a refill point was a  statement of his principles. When he opened Massida Café in Ende, Flores, he built a no bottled water rule into the business from day one. To him, it was never optional. “This actually shows that our business also cares about environmental issues, especially plastic waste,” he says.

Lidya found Trash Hero organically, through Bali’s environmental community, and the fit was immediate. “We happened to meet people from the activist community in Bali, and that’s how we were introduced to the refill point concept, which happened to match our vision exactly, the vision of Bali Refill Station to reduce plastic waste, especially in the Bali area.”

And as for Ilham in Bandung, reuse was a habit long before his business even existed . Years of hiking and outdoor activities had already made washing his own gear second nature. So when he opened a restaurant, Dapur CPH, single-use plastic never quite made sense to him. “First, I’m not really a take-away user myself. Second, because I exercise and move outdoors almost every day, especially back when I used to hike mountains, I was already used to washing things myself. In terms of product cost, we didn’t want extra cost from using plastic, so we chose to wash everything instead. I’d feel guilty if there was a lot of waste.”

All feel that the choice they made is having an impact. At Massida Café, the proof came from some visiting customers from Korea. “When they saw the Trash Hero concept, they were pretty happy because it reminded them of the restaurant system back home, where free drinking water is almost always available,” Berdhi says. At Dapur CPH, Ilham reflects,  “some customers have started to bring their own food containers, and I think, with the trend of aesthetic tumblers or whatever, people have also started getting used to refilling water.” He isn’t stopping at the kitchen door either. “Recently I’ve even thought about starting a movement for refillable detergent, because that’s such a waste generator too.”

Berdhi put the case for joining simply: “For other business owners out there, I don’t think there’s anything to lose by trying to become a Trash Hero refill point partner. Sometimes big change comes from small changes made by a lot of people.” 

Ilham agrees. “For the greater good, we have to, because there’s really no downside, I mean, the impact is only getting bigger. The waste emergency in Indonesia is getting worse too. Plus, from a business standpoint, plastic prices keep rising, packaging prices keep rising, so there’s no harm in taking dine-in tableware and reusable containers more seriously. To business owners out there, let’s shift to zero waste so the earth gets cleaner and free of plastic waste, and join the Trash Hero refill network so more people can refill their bottles.”

Through the Water Refill Network, we’ve sold 113,328 bottles through our refill partners since the end of 2014. We assume that one bottle sold saves an average of 365 plastic water bottles, one per day for a year, and, from 2023 onward, that each refill partner provides 5 refills a day. That means we’ve avoided an estimated 44.9 million single-use plastic bottles through this project so far. Right now, there are 605 refill points in the network, and we’re open to any business who would like to join us – big or small. There is no cost to join, other than the water you provide.

So next time you’re heading out the door with your bottle in hand, check the map and find a refill point near you. If you run a business or organize events yourself, you already know what to do. 💛