• 
• 

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom made a salutary move to wean city and county officials off bottled water effective today, with the ban to extend to water-coolers by December of this year. According to San Francisco city-government officials, the ban is part of an effort to combat global warming and save taxpayer money. The mayor, quoted in a press release issued earlier this week, cited the enormous environmental impact of making, transporting and disposing of the bottles as the reason behind the ban on bottled water. Other public agencies and the private sector in the United States, as well as in other countries where potable drinking water can be drawn from the tap, should learn from his example.

According to the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, global consumption of bottled water was estimated at 154 billion litres in 2004, up 57 per cent from the 98 billion litres consumed five years prior. The US, other Western industrialised countries and populous developing countries like China, Mexico and Brazil were among the top consumers of bottled water.

Some of the most dramatic increases in bottled-water consumption are taking place in developing countries, including Thailand. In this country, bottled water is being marketed as part of a modern, healthy lifestyle. Most consumers seem oblivious to the fact that bottled water is up to 1,000 times more expensive than tap water, which is now perfectly safe to drink in Bangkok and the vicinity.

The Metropolitan Waterworks Authority (MWA) has been trying to promote tap water as an alternative to bottled water through a public awareness campaign backed by scientific evidence, with limited success. This is despite the fact that Bangkok's water-supplier uses state-of-the-art production processes to supply the city's residents with clean tap water that meets or even exceeds the standard set by the World Health Organisation.

Marketers of bottled water prey mostly on public suspicion that tap water is somehow not quite up to hygienic standards or the fear that traces of naturally-occurring minerals or chlorine found in tap water - even at levels that fall within internationally recognised safety standards - could be harmful to their health.

As a result, the bottled-water industry has grown by leaps and bounds, raking in tens of billion of baht each year, selling overpriced bottled water to rich and poor alike.

Fossil fuels are used in the bottling of water. The most widely used plastic to produce water bottles is polyethylene terephthalate, which is derived from crude oil. Once bottled water is consumed, disposing of the plastic bottles is both costly and environmentally damaging.

A very small fraction of used plastic bottles are recycled, as it is considered economically unfeasible to do so. And manufacturers of bottled water are not required to take any responsibility whatsoever for recycling or disposal costs; they just make an unbelievable amount of money and pocket it.

The average family can save a considerable amount of money by switching to tap water and lessen environmental impacts at the same time. Except in some old buildings with old, rusty plumbing, the MWA says tap water is absolutely safe to drink.

Indeed, many public venues have long provided tap water through chilled drinking fountains, and most people cannot tell the difference because most of the time it tastes the same as bottled water.

For most people, continuing to buy bottled water won't make them any richer or poorer. However, it is worth noting that when you buy bottled water, you are not just consuming water, you are also consuming and paying for all of the chemicals that went into the production of the bottle, which costs more than the water it contains. We are paying for something that we can get at a much lower cost and are causing grievous environmental degradation in the process.

In Thailand, the campaign to encourage people to drink tap water should start with public agencies and private companies installing more drinking fountains connected directly to the tap to familiarise people with the idea.

Such a campaign could be phased in with progressively stronger messages telling it like it is - that it is incredibly irresponsible for people who have access to perfectly safe tap water to continue to buy bottled water.