Elgin City Football Club have delivered a Scottish Water top-up tap as an early Christmas present to the town.
This tap of accessible fresh water is the first one to be erected in Elgin, but is the 18th to be installed across Scotland so far this year. Over the next 18 months, it is hopes there will be 70 more water taps distributed throughout the country.
The top-up taps are part of Scottish Water’s “Your Water, Your Life” initiative which helps to benefit the environment and people financially.
It is hoped that the taps will encourage people to take their own refillable bottle with them and use the taps instead of buying water in a plastic bottle. This will help reduce waste in the local area and save residents money.
Elgin City striker Shan Sutherland said: “This is a great addition to Elgin’s High Street and will hopefully prompt more people to carry a refillable water bottle with them when they are out and about.”
Local Scottish Water network services operator Ewan Shand, who helped install the tap, said:
“As we reach the end of our first full year of installing our hi-tech Top Up Taps across Scotland, it’s great to bring one to the Plainstones in Elgin.”
Although over 40,000 litres of water have been distributed from the taps since the first one was installed in Edinburgh last year, there has been difficulties with them in northern temperatures.
Early last month it was reported that the water in the top-up taps in North and North-East towns had frozen and they had to be switched off.
A Scottish Water spokeswoman said that the top-up taps would be monitored in the north during the winter months.
