Making it easy to refill with refreshing free tap water
RefillNZ is an award winning, grass roots campaign that aims to prevent plastic pollution at source by making it easier to refill your reusable water bottle on the go than buy water in a single-use plastic bottle.
Putting the power to reduce single-use plastic pollution in all our hands.
Making Tap Water the Drink of Choice
“I believe that water is the best and healthiest drinking option for my family. I love knowing we are welcome to go and fill up our own water bottles at a Refill NZ cafe, even if we’re not buying food. I hate the idea of buying water in plastic bottles.” – Julie, mum of three.
We want to disrupt the current social norm that we need to buy bottled water when ‘drinking on the go’ and make it normal and easy for people to carry a reusable bottle and refill for free.
Tap water in NZ is free, clean, refreshing so there’s no need to buy bottled water.
But water fountains can be hard to find so we’re asking cafes, bars, museums, and anywhere that has freely available water, to welcome you in to refill your water bottle for free.
They have a sticker in their window – alerting passers-by that they’re welcome to come on in and fill up their bottle.
And the interactive location-based map enables you to find a RefillNZ Station easily.
Our History
RefillNZ came to life in Wellington in Oct 2018.
It came about after Jill Ford had worked with City to Sea (who founded Refill in the UK) whilst in Bristol UK, and having seen the dreadful plastic pollution around the world she was determined to take action in NZ. She set about tapping shoulders, networking, getting funding and signing up the first cafes in Wellington. Since then RefillNZ has more than 1,100 Refill sites on the map and won the Keep NZ Beautiful Community Initiative Award 2019 and was a finalist in the Sustainable Biz Network awards. For more info
Owain John was enthused and came on board with Jill; fundraising, signing up cafes and getting RefillNZ online. Owain is now working with squawk squad.co.nz to protect our native birds. There is now a small group of passionate volunteers – see our team.
We’ve had support from great people like Matt and Luke at Halcyon Design (keen surfies) who designed our logo and posters. Balazs and Gabor of Barefoot Web Design who created this web site. Laurie at UYOC who has inspired cafes all over the deep south to get involved. And other organisations, such as Wai Auckland, Healthy Families Lower Hutt and Healthy Futures who are enlisting cafes to help make tap water the drink of choice.
