Buck the Bottle: This App Finds Drinking Fountains

It’s unfathomable that we could run out of water, something so fundamental to survival. But, if current water overconsumption and mismanagement continues, a world without water is exactly where we’ll be, says the United Nations. For many, such a parched, dystopian future is already a reality: 1.1 billion lack access to safe drinking water, a scarcity that leads to the deaths of 3.75 million people each year, including one child every 20 seconds.

Against this dehydrated backdrop, we recommend you drop everything and download Oasis Places, a free app from Thermos that uses GPS to identify your location and then guides you to the closest water fountain.

Wait! Amidst all that liquid doom and gloom, you want us to drink more water?

Yes—but only if it is tap, and not bottled.

The world’s problem isn’t a lack of water—the same amount of water that existed millions of years ago exists today—but rather mismanagement and overconsumption. Chief among the factors for overconsumption is the rise of bottled water and the fall from grace of public drinking fountains.

“Public drinking fountains used to be a symbol of modernity,” says Peter Glieck, the author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession With Bottled Water. “They used to be a symbol of a city that had a good water system. And I think they can be that symbol again. I think there is an effort underway to expand access to public drinking water, to repair and expand networks of public drinking water fountains and to convince people to use them again.”

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Elegant in design and simplicity of use, the OasisPlaces app eschews distracting bells and whistles for bare-bones functionality: telling you exactly how far away the closest drinking fountain is from your current location. The best part? Users can add new fountains and pictures, and can rate the water on several criteria, including coldness anc cleanliness.

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Another perk? It is free, unlike ridiculously overpriced bottles of water.

Download the app here for iPhone.