We Buy Drinking Fountains For You
We believe free water must become more available.
Did you know only 5% of Auckland’s parks and less than 16% of playgrounds have drinking fountains available to drink from or refill bottles. This needs to change, for the health of our communities, and our world.
Keep Us Healthy
Refill Your Bottles
Drinking fountains are important for our communities’ health. Families are often forced to buy sugary drinks, because it’s cheaper than water. On average, New Zealanders consume 5-6x the recommended sugar intake, and soft drinks make up a quarter of that.
Kiwis throw out an estimated 828 million single use plastic bottles each year, often ending up on beaches and in the ocean. Drinking fountains are vital for reducing that number.
Meet our Founder
The Public Water Foundation was established to fulfil our founder’s dream of seeing more drinking fountains installed in NZ’s parks and playgrounds.
At age 9, Lilah was amazed by the number of drinking fountains that she saw in every city she visited on a trip to Europe. Passionate about the environment, she realised how drinking fountains can be a solution to keep plastic bottles out of our oceans. On her return, she realised that New Zealand has only one drinking fountain for every 3,303 people and as few as one fountain for every 17,000 people in the worst-affected area. This is a much lower ratio than other similar sized cities around the world.
Lilah began her campaign to install more drinking fountains, launching Water Us, a social enterprise that sells toilet paper to fund donations to the Public Water Foundation. Together, Lilah and these two organisations aim to see drinking fountains in every park in New Zealand.
Impact
In April 2025, The Public Water Foundation installed its first two fountains, one at Narrow Neck Beach and the other at Bayswater Park, both on Auckland’s North Shore.
If you would like to nominate a location for a future fountain, please complete the form below.
