Whatever happened to drinking fountains?

At the very southern part of University Avenue in Toronto, where it meets York Street, there is a green pipe sticking out of the ground. It comes up about waist high and makes a 90 degree bend in the south-east (ish) direction. At the end of that green pipe sits a stainless steel basin with a mysterious spout. I pass this relic everyday on my way into work from Union Station. It's a drinking fountain. I've never seen anyone use it...I don't even think it works.

I know this post is probably being made at the wrong time, seeing as there's a big scare about the H1N1 flu going on, but seriously, I wonder what ever happened to the drinking fountain.

As a kid, I remember lining up at the basin at school, where there were 3 or 4 spouts and a small step so a few kids at a time could take a big gulp of water after gym or after playing outside on a hot sunny day. Do they still have these in schools?

I also remember those stone pyramids in parks (also with a small step at the base), where you could quickly grab a drink to quench your thirst during hours of playing on the swings, slides, running around playing tag or hide and seek.

Everywhere you went, there were public fountains. Then one day, people decided they needed their water to come from a bottle. Pre-packaged individual size bottles, or large jugs of water dispensed from a water cooler. Now, instead of quickly turning on a tap and drinking your fill, you either have a water bottle to throw away (yeah, yeah, there's recycling, but really, how many water bottles are recycled and why resot to recycling, when there was no need for it in the first place???) or you have styrofoam cups to throw away, after you took a 8 second drink of water. Imagine the resources it took to make, transport, store that cup and you use it for less than 10 seconds, only for more transportation (garbage collectors) and storage (landfill) requirements for the next several hundred or thousand years.

In some of the older offices I've worked in, there are drinking fountains on every floor rusting away.

Is the drinking fountain a relic of the past? What a shame.