Ukraine’s capital Kyiv joins ‘Refill’ movement to reduce environmental impact and give residents free drinking water
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The city of Kyiv in Ukraine has joined the international Refill movement, giving residents access to free drinking water and reducing the amount of single-use plastic used by city residents.
Kyiv is working to reduce its environmental impact through the Refill initiative – which encourages citizens to refill reusable water bottles – rather than buying water in single-use plastic bottles, through the Refill app.
Currently, there are more than 400 Refill Stations in Kyiv currently listed on the app, enabling city residents and visitors to quickly locate fountains and shops where they can top up their water bottles.
The Refill app was launched by the non-profit City to Sea and aims to help communities transition from a disposable, single-use culture to a more sustainable, circular future, with reuse and refill at the centre. Since 2015, more than 330,000 Refill Stations offering refills have been implemented globally, preventing the use of an estimated 60 million plastic bottles and stopping 762 tonnes of plastic from entering the environment.
Refill stations are in use across the UK, including London where City to Sea worked with Mayor Sadiq Khan to roll out nearly 140 fountains and more than 5,000 cafés, restaurants, pubs, and retailers across the city where Londoners can top up their water bottles.
Deputy Head of the Kyiv City State Administration for the Exercise of Self-Governance Powers, Volodymyr Prokopiv, said: ‘Today Kyiv joins the global Refill movement that has over 335,000 Refill Stations mapped all over the world. This is an important step for our city in the fight against plastic pollution.’
Currently, the English version of the app is available to users, but a Ukrainian version of the app is planned to be released in the coming months. Refill programmes are active in the UK, Chile, Ecuador, Italy, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates.
‘The state of the environment is one of the most important components of a comfortable life in the city,’ said curator of LUN Misto, Anna Denysenko. ‘The Refill campaign allows everyone to make a small contribution by minimising the use of plastic in everyday life. That is why we, as an urban research project, are happy to contribute to the emergence of this important initiative in Kyiv.’
