Bottled water? No thanks
11 July 2007
The Green Party are calling for people to make a stand for the environment by rejecting the social pressure which leads to them ordering bottled water rather than asking for perfectly good tap water. The call comes after city officials in New York launched a campaign to persuade people to abandon bottled water.
Londoners drink the bottled water equivalent of just over 1 Olympic-sized swimming pool per week, of which 25% is imported. Bottled water is now the world's fastest-growing drinks sector worth £1.2bn a year and research shows that it is now outselling coca-cola in London. Yet, new figures from the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) show that tap water has improved and now meets stringent quality standards in 99.98% of cases.
Jenny Jones, Green Party member of the London Assembly, has warned of the damaging ecological impact of bottled water.
Jenny Jones said:
"Since 2000 there have been 10 million new bottled water drinkers in the UK. More than half the population now drink over two billion litres of the stuff every year.
"We need to show some independence and show that ordering tap water with your meal, or at the pub, is fashionable and the right thing to do. Selling water in bottles and burning massive quantities of fossil fuels for its transportation does not make economic or environmental sense.
"Most containers for bottled water are made from non-degradable plastics, which take a 450 years to break down when disposed of in landfill sites. Even glass bottles of water still take a lot of energy to crush and recycle, whereas all we do with a restaurant glass of water is wash it up afterwards."
1. New bottled water drinkers figures from Zenith International 20062. Defra figures on water consumption in London are available at: statistics.defra.gov.uk3. Inspectors said 99.98% of tap samples met industry standards in 2006, up from 99.96% in 2005.4. Bottled Water Information Office (BWIO).5 Jenny Jones is also chair of London Food.
