The Water Bar visits Clifton Rugby Club for the Mini’s Festival

The Bristol Water Bar made its final stop of the year at Clifton Rugby Club for the Clifton Rugby Mini’s Festival.

It was an early start for our team, who set up at 7:30am on a crisp and chilly September morning, to ensure the children competing, and their families and friends cheering them on, were kept hydrated as they learned about our water saving mission.

The Water Bar’s mission is simple, we go to events and festivals in our supply area to provide free water refills. This cuts down on plastic waste, whilst educating communities on how they can save water (and money) at home. This message is even more important as our climate changes and the cost-of-living increases.

With this mission in mind, Marc Tite and Martin Hargreaves from Clifton Rugby Club invited us to engage with over 900 children and their supporters on the topic of water saving.

Every Drip Every Drop

One of our key messages at Bristol Water is that every drip and every drop of water counts. Simple acts such as turning off the tap when brushing your teeth or installing a water meter all help to tackle water wastage. Did you know that leaving the tap running can see the equivalent of 50 glasses of water go down the drain?

Emma and Liz from Bristol Water got to work handing out ‘toothy timers’ – 2-minute sand timers that help children ensure they brush their teeth for the correct amount of time. However, there was a catch to our giveaway; to avoid being red carded and put in the Bristol Water sin bin, children had to promise that while their timer was on, their tap was off.

To our delight, most of the children we asked said they already did this! A big shift in behaviour from even a few years ago. Equipped with their toothy timers, our new generation of water saving heroes can kick on and convert more people into water saving champions!

What did we achieve?

Throughout the day we handed out 200 toothy timers. That’s 200 taps that will be turned off for 2 minutes twice a day – that’s a lot of water saved!

We spoke more than 500 attendees about water saving and pulled enough pints of water from the bar to fill 2,000 water bottles - that’s 1,000 litres of water! A huge thanks to the Bristol Water Operations team who ensured the water we supplied was of the highest standard. The words from one child sum it up best, ‘Bristol Water tastes great!’.

All in all, it was a great day to spend with members of our local community. Congratulations to all the teams who competed!