IN an effort to support a town’s plastic free campaign, one man has come up with a great idea to cut down on plastic bottles.

Richard Stevens, who lives in Yawl near Lyme Regis, is aiming to save Lyme from disposing of tens of thousands of plastic bottles by selling Yawl’s natural spring water, which runs deep beneath a bluebell wood in Uplyme.

He is offering homes and businesses a new eco-gadget, the recyclable woodland water dispenser, filled with Yawl Spring Water.

Mr Stevens said: “Doctors recommend that adults drink at least two litres of water a day to help stay healthy, but what is good for your health, isn’t always good for Lyme’s environment.

“A two-litre plastic bottle of Evian may only cost £1 in local supermarkets, but what is the cost of getting rid of all that plastic?”

Plastic Free Lyme Regis is campaigning to reduce the town’s usage of single-use plastic and as well as this, Mr Stevens was inspired to invent his new rechargeable dispenser after watching David Attenborough’s TV programmes such as ‘Blue Planet’ and ‘Climate Change The Facts’.

He added: “I was horrified to learn how much plastic there is in the sea and I knew I had to do my bit, so I threw out the plan of selling the woodland spring water in plastic bottles and came up with the idea for the dispenser.

“It costs £5 for 11 and a half litres of pure Yawl water, and the dispenser is free with your first order. When the bottle is empty, I’ll deliver another one.

“Besides being a saving on the price of some other foreign brands, which are bottled in a factory several hundred miles away, a household can save on throwing away more than 360 plastic bottles a year. if 100 homes took the dispenser, Lyme would save on the throwaway of more than 36,000 bottles a year.

“It is also good for the environment because this water wasn’t bottled months ago and isn’t having to be transported from Scotland or France.”

Mr Stevens’ customers already include Lyme Bay Holidays, Lyme Regis Brewery, River Cottage and Hix, who are also fans of the Yawl Spring Ice Mr Stevens is also selling.

The Yawl water come from an underground artesian well running beneath Knoll Hill and is naturally filtered through grassland.

The water, which was first tapped by the Romans around AD 60, surfaces in a bluebell wood behind Mr Stevens’ home at Yawl House and is bottled at source.

For more information about Yawl Spring Water, visit www.yawlspring-jurassiccoast.co.uk