The Bottled Water Backlash

By Michael Blanding, AlterNet. Posted October 19, 2007.

At Bella Luna Restaurant in Boston's funky Jamaica Plain neighborhood, you'll find star-shaped paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling and gourmet pizzas named after Red Sox players. Downstairs, the attached Milky Way Lounge & Lanes boasts a seven-lane bowling alley and a Latin dance night on Saturdays.

But there is one thing you won't find at either venue: bottled water.

The pledge caps a summer of organizing that has seen the backlash against bottled water go mainstream. Bella Luna isn't the only restaurant to ban bottled water from its menu. The movement burst into public view this spring when chef Alice Waters, the godmother of "California cuisine," nixed bottled water from her Berkeley, Calif., restaurant Chez Panisse. Soon after, Food Network favorite Mario Batali followed suit at his empire of restaurants including Manhattan's swish Del Posto, serving filtered tap water in glasses etched with information on the harmful environmental impact of bottled water

Then cities -- who probably have the most to gain from promoting municipal water -- got into the act. This June, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to cancel the city's purchasing contract for bottled water, mandating instead that city departments rely on tap water that gushes down to the city from its clean reservoirs in Yosemite National Park. The next day, over heavy lobbying from the bottled water industry, Newsom along with progressive Salt Lake City Mayor Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak pushed through a resolution at the U.S. Conference of Mayors to commission a study looking at the impact of discarded bottled water bottles on city waste streams.

According to the Container Recycling Institute (CRI), 96 percent of bottled water is sold in single-size polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles, which, because they are frequently consumed "on the go," end up in city trash cans rather than recycling bins. The national recycling rate for all PET bottles, including soda bottles, is just 23.1 percent, and bottled water is even lower. CRI estimates some 4 billion PET bottles end up in the waste stream, costing cities some $70 million a year in cleanup and landfill costs.

Bottled water "very clearly reflects the wasteful and reckless consumerism in this country," said Salt Lake City's Anderson in a conference call with reporters this month. "You really have to wonder at the utter stupidity and the irresponsibility sometimes of American consumers. These false needs are provided, and too often we just fall in line with what Madison Avenue comes up with to market these unnecessary products."

While falling short of a binding executive order, Anderson issued a directive to all city departments a year ago mandating that no tax money be spent on providing bottles of water for meetings and events. In coordination with CAI, the city has launched a campaign, called "Knock Out Bottled Water," with its own pledge for consumers and restaurants. (So far, 15 have signed up, most of them part of the city's popular upscale Gastronmy Inc. chain, whose flagship Market Street Grill earned "chef of the year" honors from Salt Lake City magazine.)

Other cities have separately pioneered their own efforts. New York, which gets pristine water from the Catskills, has started an advertising campaign to encourage residents to drink "cool, healthy, clean ... NYC water." In Berkeley, the school district last year replaced bottled water machines with large containers of tap. Other California cities, including Santa Barbara, Emeryville, San Leandro and Los Angeles have either cancelled bottled water contracts or instructed city departments not to buy bottled water. And this month, Boston signed on to the CAI pledge.

Nor is it just cities in on the East and West coasts that are taking action -- Ann Arbor, Mich., has already cancelled bottled water contracts, and mayors in other cities such as Urbana, Ill., and Wauwatosa, Wis., are considering similar actions. In Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley is considering a proposal to tax bottled water producers who bottle municipal water. And one of the very first cities to promote its tap water is -- of all places -- Louisville, Ky., which has distributed more than 1.8 million "Pure Tap" water bottles to residents since 1997 and branded a mascot, Tapper, to educate kids about the source of their water.

As the wave against bottled water has grown into a tide, the industry has not taken long to splash back. This August, the International Bottled Water Association published full-page ads in the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle decrying the "misguided and confusing criticism by activist groups and a handful of mayors who have presented misinformation and subjective criticism as facts."

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Michael Blanding is a freelance writer living in Boston. Read more of his writing at MichaelBlanding.com.

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