Lesley Griffiths AM, the Welsh Assembly’s Minister for the Environment, Energy & Rural Affairs together with children from Mount Stuart Primary School in Cardiff Bay visited Mermaid Quay this week (17 June 2019) to mark the launch of the new REFILL Mermaid Quay scheme …. just in time for National Refill Day (19 June 2019).

[aoa id=”1″]Refill is a UK-wide campaign to reduce plastic pollution by making refilling a water bottle as easy, convenient and cheap as possible, with Refill Stations on every street. The Refill app shows you where you can refill your water bottle for free.[/aoa]

A total of 10 Mermaid Quay venues have already signed up as Refill stations as part of the REFILL Mermaid Quay project, offering free water refills to members of the public:

Cadwaladers
Coffi Co
Costa
Cosy Club
The Crepe Escape
Demiro’s
Greggs
La Cha Cha
Nando’s
Yakitori #1

Mermaid Quay spent the weekend (Saturday 15 & Sunday 16 June) of the project launch collecting single use plastic bottles (for recycling by Mermaid Quay’s Waste & Environmental Services partner Mitie Waste) in a rowing boat on the waterfront and also distributing reusable water bottles (donated by Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water) to members of the public.

The Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths said,
‘I am pleased to launch REFILL Mermaid Quay today. Refill Wales is doing a great job helping make tap water more widely available in public spaces and in the process achieve our goal of becoming a Refill Nation. This scheme adds to the 180-plus places to sign up to Refill in the wider Cardiff area alone.

“Mermaid Quay is a prime example of communities doing all they can to reduce their environmental impact – they have already achieved a lot working hard to reduce waste and electricity consumption and I am sure their refill scheme will go some way to reducing plastic waste in the area.

“I am also impressed with the commitment of Class 12 children at Mount Stuart School to reduce the use of single use plastic water bottles. They took the campaign to parents by asking them to sign a pledge to provide them with a reusable water bottle and also lobbied the headmaster to provide a water fountain in the school grounds so that they can refill.”

As part of the launch of the REFILL Mermaid Quay campaign, Mermaid Quay gave all the Class 12 children a Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water reusable drinking bottle and is also to contribute to the cost of the school’s new water fountain.

Mermaid Quay Centre Manager Justin Patel said :

“Here at Mermaid Quay we’re rightly proud of the Cardiff Bay environment and want to do everything we can to reduce the amount of litter. Plastics, including single-use plastic bottles, are now the most frequently found type of litter on UK beaches and you don’t have to look far to find them littering towns, rivers and The Bay too. REFILL Mermaid Quay gives us all the opportunity to help make this type of litter a thing of the past at the same time as saving money. We believe it’s good business sense as well, as customers view businesses that provide free water refills more favourably and are more likely to return to them to make future purchases.”

Mermaid Quay is committed to working to reduce its environmental impact.

Since 2015 it has:

achieved 40% reduction in general waste
increased waste going to recycling from 18% of total waste in 2015 to to 55% in 2018
reduced food waste – using a biodigester to turn it into compost – from 120 tonnes of waste to 48 tonnes of compost
reduced annual electricity consumption by 120,144KW (approx. 30 average UK homes annual consumption)

The Mermaid Quay management team is also working closely with the businesses in the centre to introduce other environmentally friendly initiatives such as REFILL Mermaid Quay and, later this year, Plastic Free Mermaid Quay.