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This Year Give Up Bottled Water for Lent
February 13, 2008 |
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This week the BBC reported on a new group getting on board the "think outside the bottle" mentality -- the church.
The patriarch of Venice is urging Catholics in the Italian city to give up bottled water for the Christian fasting season of Lent.
Angelo Cardinal Scola wants them to donate the money saved to a water pipeline project in Thailand.Apparently he has the mayor's blessing on this as well. The mayor is apparently a tap-only drinker. But their decree may be falling on deaf ears. The story reports that "Nearly all Italians drink bottled water rather than the piped stuff. The industry is worth an estimated 3.2bn euros (£2.38bn) a year to the Italian economy."
But Scola and others have good reason to for their actions and the movement against bottled water is gaining steam among environmental groups -- particularly in the U.S. and Canada where campaigns have been waged by Polaris Institute, Food and Water Watch, and Corporate Accountability International.
A recent piece in the UK's Guardian, declared that "bottled water is set to be the latest battleground in the eco war."
Tara Lohan is a managing editor at AlterNet.
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