Bottled Water Scourge Countered by Manly Council’s Free Filtered Water
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 09.10.08
Photo by Peter Morris, from The Age
Australia’s Manly Council is striving to wean its residents and tourist visitors off bottled water. After Bondi Beach, Manly is possibly Australia’s most well known beach suburb and thus attracts a plethora of visitors who often cross Sydney Harbour by ferry to get there. However being such a drawcard has its downsides, like the sheer volume of single-use, bottled water containers.
So the local municipal council have installed six free filtered-water fountains to “combat climate change and decrease our impact on the environment by reducing the purchase of bottled water and associated waste.” And impact there is. The Age newspaper commenting on the story gleaned figures which suggest that Australians slurped $431 million AUD of bottled water last year.
Thirsty folk are encouraged to either drink direct from the water fountains, (known Down Under as ‘bubblers’) and to fill up their own reusable bottles, instead of buying bottled water.
Teamwork
The Bubbler Project is the result of Jon Dee (co-founder of Planet Ark) teaming up with Manly Mayor, Peter Macdonald, and Councillor, Barbara Aird, plus filtered water company, Culligan Australia. The exercise was already paying dividends for Culligan who reportedly already had other councils and businesses making enquiries. It is apparently offering councils free filter equipment and half-price replacement filters into the future to sweeten the transition.
Jon Dee’s new campaign The Bottle Water Alliance and he has said, "The aim is to reduce bottled water use by 20% over two years.”
Manly image found here
Local Council
From the Council’s perspective the project helps them demonstrate their commitment to helping the environment. “From the point of production to their ultimate disposal, water bottles have a significantly negative impact on our environment. The production, transportation, refrigeration and disposal of water bottles is a massive waste of our natural resources and leads to excessive greenhouse gas emissions; not to mention the obvious pollution they create in our local environment,” said the Mayor. And he has written to all his fellow mayor around the country encouraging them to follow in Manly’s lead.
Beverage Industry
As you might expect not everyone is thrilled with the initiative. 'Revamped bubblers were a waste of taxpayers' money and that "we do have an issue with … pressuring retailers into not selling bottled water" ' was the response given to aforementioned 'The Age' by the Australian Beverages Council The beverage industry have also long been dismissive of Container Deposit Legislation (CDL). (CDL is where the cost of a beverage is an initially higher due to a deposit, which is fully refundable, when the container is returned to a retail outlet. CDL only operates in one Australian state currently -- South Australia).
::Manly Council Bubble Project via ABC
More TreeHugger on Local Community Action
• Official 2005 Australian ‘Local Hero’ reduces town’s plastics bags
• Shopping Bag Tax for San Francisco?
• Transition Towns Reach New Zealand
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
Only in Australia could you have a Manly Council.
This is an excellent idea. We have a lot of water fountains in the parks where I live and we use them instead of bottled water. Our tap water is some of the best in the world, though, so we don't worry about drinking it. Filtered water would certainly remove a major reservation of using them from the table.
Now if they could just come up with a design that would keep the birds from crapping on the fountains...
It's always interesting to think back 10 - 15 years ago when bottled water wasn't so mainstream and "normal" as it is nowadays. I remember growing up and using the water fountains at school all the time. I didn't even think about bottled water, because it didn't exist then. I just drank from the faucet and got some refreshing water. And I don't just drink a little bit of water now and then!
So enter the legacy of bottled water. Its industry has conditioned many of us to think that it's the only "safe" and tasty way to drink water. It fools many people into thinking that it's almost like a man-made commodity that is only consumable in sealed bottles! What did we ever do long ago?
I think the well, bucket, or tap did just fine. I like to see municipalities promoting such things as discussed in this article. We don't need to lug a fresh bottle around with us all the time. Refill one from the tap, or just use the fountain. In industrialized countries/regions like Australia, the US, the EU, etc., tap water is highly regulated and safe to drink in most areas, so that's not a worry.
It's time to rethink the consumption of bottled water!
Living in Australia I've noticed the slow decline of bubblers since my school days... They used to be reasonably common in parks and public places, but they've since fallen into disrepair and been removed. I think it's a critical mass thing, before people started drinking bottled water, they were common (and people lobbied councils for them), but now more people have given up on them and taken to bottled water reducing demand. It'd be good to see free water fountains being a common sight around our great nation again.
Hi,
I applaud this initiative. As said in this blog many people are reluctant versus tap water. They prefer mineral water, pushed by big media campaigns emphasizing that only water of volcanic origin or purified x number of years through the mountains can be really healthy.
The message you should remember is that you keep the use of bottled water to a minimum. Furthermore, be thrifty with potable water. Remember that only 1% of the water available on earth is potable.
Eddy
To riff off of what Jason B is saying, he's absolutely right: the bottled water companies have framed the debate through advertising. Imagine if the local water bureau had an advertising budget just like the bottled water companies? What if they advertised how unsafe bottled water was, since it's not regulated like tap? What if they played up the endocrine inhibitors and other chemicals that leach from the plastic into the water before it's drunk? What would happen to sales of bottled water then?
We call them 'bubblers' in Wisconsin, USA, too.