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Grinding up the Bottle Bans?

By Keith Martin Jul 15, 2010

Source: sxc.huJust a couple of months ago, Nova Scotia became the first province to ban plastic water bottles province-wide.  Premier Darrell Dexter (NS-NDP) made the announcement in April, saying that his Government would no longer purchase bottled water.  The move follows many US states, like Illinois and New York, who’ve already done the same (although Virginia recently moved to reverse its ban), while San Francisco is proposing to ban bottled water at all public events. But what really is the point?

What’s wrong with bottled water?…

ABC News’ 20/20 show did an interesting exposé (about 7 minutes long, and from 2005 – although the style and clothing would seem to indicate a more mature heritage!).

Its results, and those of most taste tests, show little difference between bottled water and tap water.  Except the plastic waste.  The 31.2 billion litres of bottled water consumed annually in the USA require 17 million barrels of oil to produce, according to the Pacific Institute.  That’s roughly equivalent on a daily basis to the amount of oil leaking from the BP Deepwater Horizon well (or was, until they apparently sealed it today).

The Canadian Bottled Water Association has, as would be expected, opposed bans on bottled water, pointing to a claimed 13,000 direct and indirect Canadian jobs from the industry.  They also manage, while criticising anti-bottle activists for exactly the same logical error, to claim that bottled water costs just “18c for a 500ml bottle.”  Perhaps, if you’re buying it in 20 litre drums, but I don’t remember ever seeing a 500ml bottle of water for sale at anything near that price.

Anti-bottle activists have started an annual bottled-water-free day (March 11th, for the record), and produced this entertaining video, which goes some way to outlining their concerns about water bottles in general:

But probably the most concise summary comes from their website, where they outline the environmental and social issues raised by bottled water.

Vancouver

So what inspired this post?  The news that Grouse Mountain in Vancouver, long known for its strong environmental record, has started incentivising customers to use bottled water.

For those who know Vancouver, running (or crawling) the Grouse Grind is a traditional challenge.  Recently, the Grouse Mountain resort increased the price of a one-off “download” ticket to ride the cable car back down to the bottom of the Grind (effectively the only way down) from $5 to $10.  But customers who buy a bottle of water at the top can get the combined ticket and bottle for just $8 – a $2 incentive to take a bottle of water you didn’t really need in the first place.

If only half of the 100,000 people taking to the Grind each year take advantage of the deal, that’s 50,000 unnecessary water bottles that needed about 6,000 litres of oil to produce.

It seems we’re still a long way from banishing the disposable water bottle from our lives…

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