Northampton coffee shop backs Refill campaign to reduce plastic bottle use

Nicola Tipping of the Little Pickle coffee shop in St Crispins says her eatery is the first place in Northampton to feature in the national tap water campaign called Refill, and she is urging other businesses in the town centre to get behind the scheme to slash the amount of plastic bottles being bought.

Little Pickle will soon have a sticker in their coffee shop window, which shows passers-by that they can drink their tap water free-of-charge if they need to refill their water bottles and the shop can now be found on the Refill app.

The scheme, which was set up by City to Sea who launched Refill Bristol in September 2015, aims to reduce plastic pollution in landfill sites, on our streets and those that end up in the ocean.

Nicola said: "It started over the last couple of days to be honest, with the Blue Planet series in particular, highlighting the impact of plastic on the ocean and subsequently entering the food chain."

The coffee shop is also set to launch another scheme in the near future, which rewards customers for bringing back any take away coffee cups, with loyalty stamps at the shop.

She added: "What I was doing was looking at how we could influence customer behavior to return coffee cups to the coffee shop. It's about capturing that coffee cup before it goes into the bin and therefore landfill.

"These cups can be recycled but at the moment there are no collection points or incentive.

"It's only a little thing but every little thing makes a big difference."