A proposal has been made to install water refill stations in all council own and maintained buildings and parks

A proposal was put forward at a recent environment committee to further roll out water refill stations across all local authority run or maintained leisure and civic locations.

The local authority previously created 10 public water stations with refill locations identified on its website.

Councillor Nicola Parker said: “Given the success of the roll out of the limited water refill stations, I want to propose that we continue with a further roll out of water refill stations.

“These would be in every council building, every council maintained and owned playpark and leisure facility.”

According to the LCCC website, Northern Ireland uses 145 million single-use plastic bottles every year with 340 million plastic bottles a year being saved if just one in 10 people refilled once a week.

The cost of installing water refill stations can vary with recent online estimates for standalone water stations in the region of £4k to £5k as well as annual maintenance cost of up to £300 each.

However, according to a council report, the recent water refill tap installations in the LCCC area cost approximately £300 each. The signs for each refill station cost about £30.

An environment committee paper shows that two further sites are currently being assessed for an installation at Lagan Park Dromara and Hydebank playing fields.

A council officer responded: “I am not sure that sits in the remit of this committee, it could be leisure and community wellbeing.

“However, we will investigate further and bring a report back to council.”