Expected/Achieved results

Refill Now aims to facilitate the access to the Refill Water points in the tourism destinations reducing the consumption of plastic.
Since the beginning of the project, we have uploaded more than 4000 private & public Refill water points on the Refill Map, distributed more than 4500 reusable bottles and we have more than 35 businesses part of the Refill Now Community.
Concerning Elba Island, but also other destinations, our expected results are the reduction of daily plastic consumption, increase of Refill water points in the destinations (both public and private), increase awareness about the plastic problem and encourage more businesses and people on applying responsible behaviors minimizing the impact on the environment.
Thanks to the tourism and private businesses, we will be able to create an extensive network of Refill points and able to create destinations where we can easily access to drinking water.

Long term goals

Our mission is to help creating destinations where people can easily buy or get drink water or food without using plastic bottles and materials.
The project is linked with the SDG working on giving easy access to clean drinking water to everyone, promote responsible consumption and create sustainable cities and communities.
The project is linked at local, regional and national level aiming to reduce the waste generation with particular attention to the single-use plastic packaging. The reduction of plastic, consequently, decrease the CO2 emissions generated by its production and transportation. In addition, the Refill Now bottles and accessories are already carbon neutral, calculating their CO2 emissions & compensating them supporting some reforestation project in Italy and worldwide.
To conclude, with Refill Now with rise awareness about the plastic consumption and thanks to our partners we promote a more sustainable tourism and responsible behaviours minimizing our impact on the environment preserving the nature and oceans.

Main indicators

Indicator 1: Evolution of consumption (m3) of tap water supplied by the street drinking fountains

Indicator 2: Volume of smart reusable bottles distributed in the destinations

Indicator 3: Number of people using the QR Code and Refill Now Map

Indicator 4: Number of new Refill Water points, public and private, uploaded on the network

Responsible organization in charge of actions

Main stakeholders involved in the planning and implementation of the action

Main investor

If available/relevant please specify also the share of public and private funding: The project is founded by the startup: ECO-2MD

Necessary preconditions for best practice implementation

In our case, being a startup we analyzed the needs of creating this system to resolve a problem which was and is happening in some destinations with the lack of refill water point and a system to localize and communicate about them. It was pretty quick to start the project.
The feedback about the first pilot project in 2019 was excellent, so in 2020 and 2021 we kept developing the technology, the Refill Now Map and the Refill Now bottles.
Our business partners, like hotels, bars, restaurants are really satisfied and support the project buying and distributing the reusable bottles, communicating about the Refill Now Map and educating their customers on how to behave responsively in the destinations.
The collaboration of private and public stakeholders is the key of the success of this project.

Main challeges encountered during planning, implementation and monitoring

COVID19 has slowed down a bit the development of the project, however last year we increased the number of partners and we distributed more reusable bottles in our destination.

Being a project develop by a startup, the lack of funding is a challenge we have.

Difficulties to access to the waste management and public water consumption data.

Preconditions for replication

Programme cofinanced by the European Regional Development Fund
Refill Now is a sustainable project here to stay in the long run. It started in Elba Island but, thanks to the success and interest, we are currently developing the same operational model in other destinations in Italy and Europe.
Our module is easy to adapt and use by other destinations and we would be happy to collaborate with other country in order to share our technology, QR code and good practice.
At the moment, we are working on developing new features such as the multi-lingua option in order to share information to all travellers and improve the loading speed in order to make an easy and fast access to the service.
Moreover, in the future, the objective is to create a statistic system in order to evaluate how much plastic we reduce by implementing this project in a tourism destination.

Refill Now, revolutionize the way drinking water is consumed in a tourism destination

• English