U.S. Cities Going off the Bottle

"It started with San Francisco's Mayor Gavin Newsom, but now the rest of the country is getting on board. Last summer Newsom issued an executive order canceling San Francisco's bottled water contracts. Now, at the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which represents more than 1,100 mayors nationwide, a resolution was passed to encourage all mayors to phase out their cities' spending on bottled water and to promote tap water.

'It's just plain common sense for cities to stop padding the bottled water industry's bottom line at taxpayer expense,' said Gigi Kellett, national director of CAI's Think Outside the Bottle campaign. 'This resolution will send the strong message that opting for tap over bottled water is what's best for our environment, our pocketbooks and our long-term, equitable access to our most essential resource.'

The bottled water industry has grown into an $11.5 billion empire in recent years that went virtually unchallenged until last year, when a massive backlash began, ignited mostly by an increasing environmental awareness about bottled water. For one, Food and Water Watch reported that it takes 17.6 million barrels of oil each year to make all the plastic bottles we need in the United States -- the equivalent of one than 1 million vehicles on the roads -- not to mention all the fuel it takes to ship the bottles to stores and to dispose of them. More than 80 percent of the bottles end up in landfills or tossed onto the street, making their way into our waterways; some even end up in the giant plastic whirlpool circling in the Pacific Ocean that is poisoning marine life and birds.

While tap water may be safer than most bottled water, we need increasing vigilance to protect funding to keep it that way and to ensure continued federal funding for our public water infrastructure. It is estimated that cities need $22 billion each year to keep up their public water systems, and the Conference of Mayors resolution is one way to help increase support for public water."