Since yesterday, visitors strolling through the port of Maó will be able to refill their water bottles thanks to the installation of a filtered water fountain financed by Menorca Preservation, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Port Authority of the Balearic Islands (APB) and the Cleanwave Foundation.

The filtered water fountain has been installed on the Levante quay and will become part of the network of refill points promoted by the Cleanwave Movement, an initiative of the Cleanwave Foundation, offering free access to drinking water to people in the area so they can refill their bottles and thus avoid buying single-use plastic ones. Currently, this network has more than 60 public fountains installed in the Balearic Islands and can be found through its free app. Thanks to additional funding, Menorca Preservation will work to expand this network in Menorca through the Menorca Sin Plástico Alliance.

The initiative stems from the identification of the use of plastic bottles as an important element of pollution within the “Action Plan for the reduction of plastic pollution in Menorca 2030“ developed by the Plastic-Free Menorca Alliance in 2021 together with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In view of this, the Action Plan proposed the installation of filtered drinking water fountains at the busiest tourist spots in order to reduce the use of bottled water on the island. 

The Cleanwave Foundation estimates that since 2017, through the installation of these fountains, they have managed to avoid the use of more than 3,300,000 plastic bottles (0.5 l). In addition, according to data from the Cleanwave Foundation, it is estimated that in the Balearic Islands 1.5 million single-use plastic bottles are used daily, twice as many as in the rest of Spain. They also calculate that 92% of the waste on the beaches of the Mediterranean islands is plastic, 40% of which corresponds to single-use plastic bottles, and that, specifically, more than 8 million tonnes of plastic bottles end up in the sea each year. 

The APB is collaborating in the project and has taken charge of the installation and maintenance of the fountain. According to the delegate of the port of Maó, Vicent Fullana, “the commitment of the APB to the reduction of plastic is actually being put into practice, as you can see from the elimination of single-use plastics at the five ports of general interest that it manages, through an internal instruction in force since October 2020. It is no longer just a reduction of waste, but a change in company culture, which we are now also passing on to port users”.