Think Outside the Bottle

This week, the New South Wales state premier banned all state departments and agencies from buying bottled water, calling it a waste of money and natural resources.

Later that same day, residents of the rural town of Bundanoon, south of Sydney, voted to protect the earth and their wallets banning the sale of bottled water in their town. "I have never seen 350 Australians in the same room all agreeing to something," said Jon Dee, who helped spearhead the "Bundy on Tap" campaign in Bundanoon.

Bundanoon's battle against the bottle has been brewing for years, ever since a Sydney-based beverage company announced plans to build a water extraction plant in the town. Residents were furious over the prospect of an outsider taking their water, trucking it up to Sydney for processing and then selling it back to them.

To prevent lost profit in the 10 town businesses that sell bottled water, it has been suggested they instead sell reusable bottles for about the same price. Residents will be able to fill the bottles for free at public water fountains, or pay a small fee to fill them with filtered water kept in the stores.

Over the past few years, at least 60 cities in the U.S. and a handful of others in Canada and the U.K. have agreed to stop spending taxpayer dollars on bottled water.

Although bottled water was first popularized in the 1980s as a convenient, healthy alternative to sugary drinks, it was quickly realized that it is actually just an environmental menace.


Here are some handy stats on bottled water consumption:

• The United States consumes the most bottled water on the planet.
  
• In 2007, the last year for which global statistics were available, more than 200 billion liters of bottled water were sold around the world, mostly in North America and Europe.
• The total amount sold in the United States alone that year (33 billion liters) averages out to about 110 liters (almost 30 gallons) of water per person.
• An estimated total of the equivalent of 32-54 million barrels of oil was required to generate the energy to produce the amount of bottled water consumed in the U.S. in 2007.

Let's take these statistics to our local officials and urge them to follow suit with "Boulder on Tap" and "Baltimore on Tap" and "Buffalo on Tap" and "Wherever-else-y'all-live on Tap" (even if you don't live in a "B" town like the rest of us). Let's think outside the bottle.

Sources: Australians Ban Bottled Water; bottled water stats