This town clearly understands how terrible bottled water is and they’ve done something about it! In case you didn’t know – the actual water in the bottle isn’t regulated as tap water is, the plastic not only can leach toxins into the water you plan to drink but if not recycled (as most aren’t) they take forever to break down in our land fills!
Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 July 2009 12.03 BST
Bottled water is often criticised as an environmental menace. Photograph: Bruno Vincent/Getty Images
Residents of a rural Australian town have voted to ban the sale of bottled water. They are possibly the first community in the world to take such a step.
Residents of Bundanoon cheered after their near-unanimous approval of the measure at a town meeting on Wednesday. It was the second blow to Australia‘s beverage industry in one day. Hours earlier, 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.
“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, a town of 2,500 about 100 miles south of Sydney. “It’s time for people to realise they’re being conned by the bottled water industry.”
First popularised in the 1980s as a convenient, healthy alternative to sugary drinks, bottled water today is often criticised as an environmental menace, with bottles cluttering landfills and requiring large amounts of energy to produce and transport.
Over the past few years, at least 60 cities in the United States and a handful of others in Canada and the United Kingdom have agreed to stop spending taxpayer money on bottled water, which is often consumed during city meetings, said Deborah Lapidus, organiser of Corporate Accountability International’s “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign in the US.
But the Boston-based nonprofit corporate watchdog has never heard of a community banning the sale of bottled water, she said.
“I think what this town is doing is taking it one step further and recognising that there’s safe drinking water coming out of our taps,” she said.
