Water Bottle in Nature
On October 23, 2023, I created the Public Drinking Fountains Map in Romania on Google Maps. It's a collaborative map where anyone can add the public drinking fountain in their neighborhood. It took me 10 minutes to create, and at 2:00 PM, I launched it on Facebook, complete with the 3 public fountains where I usually refill my water bottle. By evening, it was already populated with 57 fountains from 5 cities in Romania.
July 2022
For me, the story also began with a Facebook post by Corina Murafa (sometime around #plasticfreejuly 2022), who rhetorically wondered when and why water became a commodity. It was a question that stuck with me. The topic of commodification constantly bothers me (probably like all of us). We've commodified everything: from love to vulnerability, to water. Everything is for sale.
August 2023
Then, this summer I went to the Sziget Music Festival in Budapest for the first time. And, although I saw Billie Eilish, the thing that impressed me the most (no exaggeration) was that the venue had enough fountains where you could drink free water. And the water was good.
August 15 was a scorching hot day, and I greatly enjoyed the abundant water. I stood in a sea of people for 4 hours without being able to move, and the full bottle of water I had with me was a lifesaver. People were fainting around us. I strongly felt that access to potable water is a vital right for which we should not have to pay. Not even at festivals. In Budapest, I also received free water at restaurants. Again, it tasted very good. I found public fountains in Barcelona too, but the water was extremely salty. There, I preferred to buy it. I didn't like the taste of tap water in Berlin either. Not even filtered. All in all, I've come to highly appreciate the taste of tap water in Romania.
I made a shout-out on Facebook about access to water in public places, and in the comments, the topic of public network water quality came up, where, indeed, I had nothing to say. Who knows what kind of water is at the public fountain?
October 2023
ApaNova knows. And this month they published a water quality report, which I also discovered on Facebook in the group Micile Bucurii led by Roxana Buzețelu. The initial post with the report was by Alma Cazacu. It immediately caught my attention, and I reshared it myself, mentioning that public fountains can be found on Google Maps. In the meantime, I had started to add the public fountains to the map and discovered that many of them were already there. In the comments, Francisc Zinz suggested that a dedicated map could be made, and from there to its creation, I took one small step.
I've mentioned so many names because I want it to be understood how important it is to communicate and support each other, to get involved in the topics that matter to us, even online. That's why I invite you to save the map to your account, use it, and populate it with all the potable water sources you know.
A good link to share: https://shorturl.at/hUV03
