Water gets a makeover with reusable bottles

The charity initiative, called Tap, will sell reusable water bottles as well as stickers to attach to them to advertise the fact that they are not full of environmentally harmful mineral water.

The scheme will give 70 per cent of its profits to water charities.

It follows the Evening Standard's highly successful Water On Tap campaign, which has now signed up more than 3,000 clubs and restaurants. Signatories have pledged to offer tap water to customers as a matter of course.

Tap's founder, Joshua Blackburn of digital marketing agency Provokateur, said: "Bottled water is simply a marketing invention, a brand. What we wanted to do was create a brand around tap water, to turn it into an essential fashion accessory.

"The recent campaigns from the Evening Standard and others have shown that consumers are getting used to asking for tap water in restaurants.

"What we are now selling them is the idea of DIY water when they are out and about. We want to fight marketing with marketing."

Tap will sell £6 books of 10 selfadhesive Tap labels for both small and large water bottles. The labels advertise the Tap brand and allow consumers to mark how many times each bottle has been used.

"We know these bottles can't be reused forever, but the accepted wisdom is that 10 times is perfectly safe," said Mr Blackburn.

Next month the company will also begin selling reusable water bottles for between £6 and £8.50, depending on their size. It is currently negotiating with several major retailers to distribute the bottles around the country.

The campaign is to launch today with a taste test at Gabriel's Wharf on the South Bank from 10am, where London tap water will be pitted against bottled water.

In a previous test organised by Decanter magazine, the tap water topped the table and several sommeliers ranked it as their favourite of all the brands, which included 420 Volcanic, which sells for £50 a litre at Claridge's and is 5,000 times as expensive as tap water.

Decanter editor Guy Woodward said: "It's bad enough that restaurants get away with charging largely ignorant consumers scandalous mark-ups on wine, but charging £5, £10 and £20 for a resource which is freely available is an outrage."

Mayor Boris Johnson said: "I am pleased to lend my support to Tap and its mission to encourage people to drink more tap water over bottled water. We have free tap water in London and by choosing this over expensive bottled water, Londoners can save money, reduce unsightly litter and prevent unnecessarily waste."