Passengers to soon get 500 ml water bottles in Vande Bharat, Step To Curb Plastic Pollution 

Railways cut down water wastage by replacing one litre water bottles with 500 ml bottles.

26 April 2024

By Payoshi Bisht

In an initiative taken by the Indian Railways to reduce water wastage by the passengers, the railways will now be providing a 500 ml water bottle of packaged drinking water to the train passengers. Along with this, another bottle of 500 ml will be provided to the passengers without any extra cost in case the passenger requires it. This will help reduce water wastage during train travel. 

Till now, almost one litre bottles were distributed to the train passengers but it was observed that a lot of water was wasted and could not be utilised after the passengers discarded the half-filled bottles. This was done in trains like Rajdhani Express and even Vande Bharat Express. The railways have argued that people do not consume the entire 1 litre of water and end up wasting half of it. Another reason is that Vande Bharat Trains mostly cover short distances, unlike Rajdhani trains which cover long stretches. This can be one of the reasons for the water wastage. 

In 2019, a similar initiative was introduced on Shatabdi trains where passengers were provided with 500ml PDW bottles instead of 1 litre bottles. Introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2019, Vande Bharat Express trains are currently operating on over 40 routes in India.

The first train was flagged off on the New Delhi-Kanpur-Allahabad-Varanasi route by Prime Minister Modi on February 15, 2019.

The trains will run at half speed and have many modern features such as Wi-Fi connectivity, giant glass windows, 32-inch entertainment screens, extended footrests and mini pantries. 

Meanwhile, the announcement of the new water bottle policy by the Railways comes as several states across India, including West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Karnataka, Jharkhand and Telangana, are experiencing an extreme heat wave.