Fountains are increasingly seen as a way to fight plastic bottle use, but half of them no longer work

Public drinking fountains could be installed across the country under government plans to reduce the number of single-use plastic bottles that pollute the ocean.

Michael Gove believes that greater access to fountains will encourage people to carry refillable bottles instead of buying disposable ones.

The environment secretary said yesterday that fountains were one of the solutions the government was considering to tackle the “surge of plastic clogging our rivers and oceans”. It has already said that it is contemplating a deposit scheme for drinks containers and a tax on disposable coffee cups.

“Across the world, more than a million birds and over 100,000 other sea mammals and turtles die every year from eating and getting tangled up in plastic waste,” Mr Gove said.

“We have