Banning The Bottle

Bottled Water, once the favoured accessory of celebrities and their followers, is currently losing its cache due to the growing awareness of its environmental impact. For years, environmentalists like David Suzuki have spoken of the evils of bottled water but now many other organizations and individuals are voicing their concerns and taking action.

Politicians around the world are getting involved from both the economic and ethical standpoints. San Francisco banned spending of public funds on the product and New York City is encouraging people to refill containers.

The United Church of Canada is asking their members to boycott bottled water arguing that water is a basic human right and should not be sold for profit. “Concerns about bottled water are bubbling up in Catholic organizations” says The National Catholic Reporter in an article titled “Religious orders bring clout to war on bottled water”.

The Canadian Polaris Institute has launched the “Inside the Bottle” project that is designed to stimulate awareness about the bottled water industry. They are taking part in the Think Outside the Bottle campaign that has many Canadian and American universities and colleges declaring their campuses to be “bottle water free zones”.

Students at Ryerson University built a “Tower of Consumption” out of empty water bottles to draw attention to the waste. “The bottled water is expensive on campus,” said Rebecca Rose, one of the organizers. “A student could buy a textbook with that money.” In another attempt to raise public awareness, environmental campaigner David de Rothschild will set off across the Pacific Ocean in a boat made from waste water bottles.

Commercial entities are becoming involved even though their actions may affect their revenues. Restaurants, including Incanto, in San Francisco, Poggio in Sausalito and Watermark in London, have banned bottled water from their menus. What is their solution? They serve only filtered tap water. “Serving our local water in reusable carafes makes more sense for the environment than manufacturing thousands of single-use bottles for someone to use once and throw away,” Incanto explains on its website.

Del Posto, an elegant and expensive restaurant in New York, is joining the movement, serving their filtered still and carbonated water in elegant containers that have an explanation of why bottled water is no longer available etched on the glass. While relying on bottled sources of water is convenient, especially when away from home, the environmental impact is far too great to ignore. We should all take our cue from these pioneering enterprises and rely upon pure filtered water in our homes. Remember though, it is important to ensure that the filtration system that you purchase is NSF Certified to remove heavy metals, bacteria and other contaminants from your tap water.