Water-bottle refilling service saves plastic at Montréal music festival

The Montréal International Jazz Festival featured Fontaine Naya, a water-bottle refilling service from Quebec-based Naya Waters.

We’ve seen numerous efforts to make the disposable plastic water bottle a thing of the past, including — most recently — a public fountain in Paris that even serves up sparkling water. Now, taking the concept to events, this past summer’s Montréal International Jazz Festival featured Fontaine Naya, a water-bottle refilling service from Quebec-based Naya Waters designed to minimize plastic waste. The Montréal International Jazz Festival has been carbon-neutral since 2008, so this year’s focus on water bottles is part of a concerted sustainability effort. For CAD 1.50, festival-goers who visited the Fontaine Naya could get a 500mL refill of Naya’s natural spring water rather than having to purchase and then dispose of a brand-new prefilled bottle. Major summertime events are surely one of the biggest occasions for water-bottle use, but the disposable plastic vessels still play a significant role in daily life as well — hence the need for like-minded refilling efforts in cafés and restaurants, similar to the ones we’ve already seen in New York and the UK. Restaurateurs, event organizers and anyone in charge of a public meeting space of any kind: how about you? Spotted by: RP