MyMizu App - Water tapping app in Japan

Environmental consciousness is slowly but (hopefully!) surely catching up in Japan. From conversations about how to curb food waste — which is estimated to be around 6.5 million tonnes of food per year — to the Environment minister Shinjiro Koizumi saying that the fight against climate change should be sexy and fun, the trend is moving at a glacial pace in the right direction.

The paradise land for bottled drinks, Japan produces and uses roughly 23 billion plastic bottles per year, yes billion with a big “B,” and 98% of those bottles are used for drinks. If we do the math and break that down that’s 64 million bottles a day, 2.6 million bottles and hour, 44,000 bottles a minute and 740 bottles per second. That means the average person in Japan uses 184 plastic bottles per year. If these figures seem alarming, they should be.

But there is hope on the horizon, with a new app called the MyMizu App. Mizu (水) = water, and just as the name states, the app is a crowd sourced resource on where to refill your (hopefully??) reusable water bottles. The app indicates public spaces like parks that have water fountains where users can refill their water bottles. In addition, they are trying to engage local businesses, restaurants and cafes to  provide water refills for free. Two weeks after launching, the app already had 8,000 locations logged and over 5,000 downloads. 

The app allows users and businesses to log water-refilling stations on their own with the hope that a community effort will help spread the use and engagement of water filling services all over Japan.