Hooray for the City of Melbourne, for its first filtered water station!

Filtered water station

The City of Melbourne has installed a water station in the Bourke Street Mall where you can refill your bottle with free, filtered water.

The station will be there for a trial period through the warm weather months until the end of April 2010.

Despite the high quality of Australian water, Australians spend half a billion dollars per year on bottled water.

Every year, billions of discarded plastic water bottles around the world end up as litter or landfill. 

The City of Melbourne will research whether the water station leads to less plastic bottles being discarded in the area.

Bottled water damages the environment by consuming oil and other resources. The processing, refrigeration and transportation of bottled water creates significant greenhouse gases.

The water filter station is located at the Swanston Street end of the Bourke Street Mall on the south side. Look out for our City Ambassadors in red blazers who can direct you to it.

School bans plastic water bottles

Monte Sant' Angelo Mercy College in Sydney's north has banned the sale of plastic water bottles.

from an article at ABC North Coast

The canteen will no longer stock plastic water bottles and the school also spent $7,500 installing water bubblers for the students to use instead.

The initiative will be launched today by sailor activist David de Rothschild who this week completed a voyage across the Pacific Ocean on the Plastiki, a boat made from recycled bottles.

Year 12 student Claudia Saunders says she hopes the ban will do more than reduce the school's consumption of plastic bottles.

"It's also about promoting it to Monte girls and getting the awareness out there how unnecessary these bottles are and the damage they can cause to the environment, both in their production and then in their disposal," she said.

The school's effort has been hailed as a model that can be rolled out across the country.

Jon Dee, founder of the environment group Do Something, says the campaign will significantly reduce the amount of plastic waste at the school.

"We'll have 1,100 girls at this school who won't have bottled water," he said.

"Now if they can do that at Monte Sant' Angelo there's no reason why other schools couldn't follow this example.

"It will set a great environmental role model for the kids but it will also show kids you can help the environment and you can save money at the same time."

Roving water stations help New Yorkers beat the heat

from an article in Ode magazine:

Tuesday is Brooklyn Borough Hall. Wednesday is Times Square. Thursday is West 175th Street.

That's when and where drinking water is disseminated via outdoor drinking water stations, for New Yorkers and tourists.

Each station has six faucets, which can be used for drinking or to fill a water bottle. The portable fountains connect to fire hydrants and also cater to the city's four-legged citizens with separate bowls of water for dogs and other pets.

The Water-on-the-Go program began on July 4 and will continue through Labor Day Weekend. It's part of New York City's attempt to fight the dog days of summer and reduce its carbon footprint.

The program is a partnership between the Department of Environmental Protection, theDepartment of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Department of Parks and Recreation, theDepartment of Transportation and NYC Service.

A longstanding point of pride for New Yorkers, the city's agua comes to the five boroughs from a watershed more than 125 miles north of the Bronx. The whistle-wetting substance comes from 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes and makes it way to Gotham via some 7,000 miles of water mains, tunnels and aqueducts.

Following a failed bid to introduce a tax on soda sales in New York, Mayor Bloomberg celebrated the city's newfound independence from disposable water bottles last week: "Our water is the healthiest, most affordable and most environmentally friendly way to stay hydrated."

Department of Environmental Protection staff will deliver, set up and disconnect the fountains at the beginning and end of each day and rotate locations according to the summer schedule.

• Tuesdays at the Brooklyn Borough Hall Greenmarket
• Wednesdays at the Times Square Public Plaza
• Thursdays at the West 175th Street and Broadway Greenmarket
• Fridays at the Union Square Greenmarket
• Saturdays at events in Staten Island, Queens and the Bronx
• Sundays at rotating locations
  Photo by gfpeck via Flickr.

New York City: Love Our Tap Water

does the bubbler sound a death rattle? Time to ask your city for more of them...

from an article in triplepundit

by Leon Kaye

If the bottled water industry continues to grow at the rate it has enjoyed the past decade, water fountains may become the new pay phones.  Walk through an airport concourse or public park and most water fountains stand unused.  Why would future new or retrofitted buildings include features, like water fountains that will only be ignored?  Cities that have perfectly fine drinking water, including Seoul and Amsterdam, have few drinking fountains in sight, and this could become true in American cities, too, if bottling companies have their way.

The growth in bottled water has reaped disturbing consequences:  more energy consumed from hauling heavy cases of water, more plastic manufactured and thrown away, and not to mention the huge markup of products that cost a few pennies per unit.  Bottled water companies have succeeded in marketing to consumers the message that their bottled water is far superior to the tap never mind the fact that that plastic bottle often contains regular old tap water.

One city, however is, trying to bring back the love for the tap:  New York City is accelerating a public service announcement campaign that is letting its 8 million residents know that drinking its tap water is perfectly safe.

New York’s Environmental Protection Commissioner, Cas Holloway, brings up an important point: if tap water is so bad for you, then why is all right in the city’s pizza, bagels, Italian ice, piroshkies, and other foods for which the Big Apple is famous?  New York’s water, which also quenches the thirst of outlying counties, including posh Westchester, comes from an upstate watershed, providing water so pure that it requires no filtration.  So why do people keep buying bottled water when they have an option at home that has almost no cost?

Part of the answer lies in the bottle companies’ marketing over the years.  Going beyond the product placement in stores and messages in print advertisements and billboards, these companies are attending “green events” to promote this very profitable drink.  Coca-Cola, for example, was at the Los Angeles Go Green Conference earlier this year, staffing a booth that handed out literature touting the benefits of bottled water.  Coca-Cola and the bottling industry claim that plastic bottles are only 1% of the total trash that ends up in landfill, is a trusted source for water, and in their view, consumers should have a choice when it comes to quenching their thirst.

So New York is hoping to reverse this trend toward bottle water; more water faucets are provided in public spaces, including faucets for dogs. They are also jumping on the branding wagon with  a full product line promoting the city’s water available at its online City Store.  Considering the economic and environmental costs resulting from hauling water from across the nation or across the Pacific, one of the best financial decisions any firm or individual can make is to discourage the purchase of something that is practically free.

Why Tap Water is Better Than Bottled Water

another article about the bottled water scam

from an article in National Geographic:

Solvie Karlstrom and Christine Dell'Amore

National Geographic's Green Guide

Published March 10, 2010

Bottled water is a drain on the environment: The U.S. public goes through about 50 billion water bottles a year, and most of those plastic containers are not recycled, according to Elizabeth Royte's 2008 book Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It.
Transporting the bottles and keeping them cold also burns fossil fuels, which give off greenhouse gases. And groundwater pumping by bottled-water companies draws heavily on underground aquifers and harms watersheds, according to the Sierra Club, an environmental nonprofit. And according to some estimates, it takes up to three liters of water to produce one liter of bottled water.
Yet more than U.S. $100 billion is spent every year on bottled water globally. In many cities in developing countries where there is not a safe source of tap water, bottled water becomes a somewhat trusted option.
But in the U.S., where tap water is federally regulated and often screened for dangerous pollutants, the public drinks 21 gallons (79 liters) of bottled water per capita per year on average, according to the Columbia Water Center at Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York. The bottled-water industry is so successful, it has outpaced milk, coffee, and juice in number of gallons of drinks sold—putting it behind only beer and soda.


Water Bottle Bans
Though the sale and consumption of bottled water is still on the rise, certain policymakers and activists have taken steps to reduce it and encourage people to drink tap. In September 2009, the Australian city of Bundanoon became the first city in the world to completely ban bottled water from its stores' shelves, installing water fountains around the city instead.
Among U.S. cities that have taken action are San Francisco and Seattle, which no longer buy water for city use, and Chicago, which added a five-cent tax on each bottle. Several restaurants in those cities have also given up bottled for filtered tap. Other cities are also considering taking action.
The tide toward tap has boosted businesses that make reusable water bottles, especially aluminum and stainless steel varieties. Many reusable bottles are made of polycarbonate plastic, but those often contain bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical linked to reproductive problems and heart disease. In response, some polycarbonate-bottle makers have phased out BPA and advertise "BPA-free" products.
(Related: "Chemical BPA Linked to Heart Disease, Study Confirms.")


Health Costs
Not only does bottled water contribute to excessive waste, but it costs us a thousand times more than water from our faucet at home, and it's likely no safer or cleaner, experts say. A 2008 investigation by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group found some bottled water is sullied with untested industrial chemicals and may not necessarily be cleaner than tap water.
(Related: "What's Best for Kids: Bottled Water or Fountains?")
Water aside, the plastic used in single-use bottles can pose more of a contamination threat than the water. A safe plastic if used only once, #1 polyethylene terephthalate (PET or PETE) is the most common resin used in disposable bottles. However, as #1 bottles are reused, as they commonly are, they can leach chemicals such as DEHA, a possible human carcinogen, and benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), a potential hormone disruptor. And because the plastic is porous you'll likely get a swill of harmful bacteria with each gulp if you reuse the bottles.


Bottled Tap Water
More than 80 percent of recyclable plastic bottles end up in landfills each year. They do not break down naturally and release toxic chemicals when they finally do decompose, according to the Columbia Water Center.
Another major problem with bottled water, according to Columbia, is that a traditionally public good has been privatized. Bottled water companies gain high profits by drawing water from public water sources, putting it in plastic containers, and reselling it at 2,900 times the price of regular tap. Some experts contend that the profits from bottled water companies could go toward improving public water supplies and infrastructure—making better water for everyone.
With reporting by Eliza Barclay

On the water wagon

Article about the ongoing success of the 'Bundy on Tap' project and the worldwide influence it is having including the announcement of city "bottle filling stations".

from an article by RICHARD FOX
20 Jun, 2010 04:00 AM

WHEN businesses in the small Southern Highlands town of Bundanoon stopped selling bottled water last year, they did not expect the reaction the decision received.
The town instantly shot to worldwide fame, with Bundy On Tap campaign founder and local businessman, Huw Kingston, being interviewed by the likes of the BBC, CNN and The New York Times.

Almost eight months on from that decision, the campaign is still influencing attitudes to environmental water concerns.

“I knew it was a story for NSW, but I didn’t think it would do what it has,” Mr Kingston said.

“The town has always been a can do town and there’s a feeling that this has put it ahead of itself.”

Twenty retailers in Bundanoon stopped selling bottled water in late September as the Bundy on Tap campaign was switched on, with reusable water bottles – selling from $4 – sold in their place.
Water fountains were also erected throughout the town centre, providing free, clean drinking water to residents.

“Something as basic as water should be free,” said Bundy On Tap project manager, Sandra Menteith.

“It’s a project that just makes commonsense and people realised that.”

Thanks to the worldwide attention it received, the Bundanoon scheme has influenced decisions across the globe. In Canada, 71 municipalities in Nova Scotia have banned bottled water from State-owned buildings, while the UK city of Peterborough will do so from 2013.
In NSW, the South Coast town of Milton installed its first water bottle filling station in April, and another is planned in the nearby town of Kangaroo Valley later this year.

Jumping on the water wagon, the then State Premier, Nathan Rees, stopped sales of bottled water from all Government buildings a day after the Bundanoon vote. It was Manly Council in August, 2008, that became the first in Australia to provide water bottle filling stations in a bid to cut down on bottled water and its waste.

The first big test of the Bundanoon scheme was passed with flying colours in April, when 15,000 visitors descended on the town for the annual Bundanoon Highland Gathering.

Green ideas flow, like water

A Canadian University organizers a conference for 9000 people along environmentally sound principals, including substituting bottled water for the real thing.

Concordia university conference organizers and volunteers dig deep to host an environmentally friendly event, from supplying compost bins and organic coffee to mapping out water fountains

By MONIQUE BEAUDIN, The Gazette June 21, 2010

When nearly 9,000 people descended on Concordia University for an academic conference this month, organizers had more to think about than just booking guest speakers, finding hotel rooms and reserving lecture halls.
Determined to organize an environmentally friendly conference, they also had to try to source locally produced food to feed the visiting academics, provide organic coffee to get them going in the morning, offer recycling and composting collection along with garbage collection, and make sure water fountains were well marked on campus maps since no one would be getting any bottled water.
Getting rid of bottled water was something the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences wanted to do, said spokesman Alison Faulknor. The federation and Concordia together organized the eight-day conference, and encouraged conference-goers to bring their own water bottles and fill them up at campus fountains.
"This is the first year we decided not to distribute water, and that was actually something that our delegates had been asking for for a couple of years," Faulknor said. "Every year we're working with host universities, and they're moving in that direction as well. Bottled water is being banned on campuses across the country."
In the past, between 3,000 and 4,000 bottles of water were usually distributed at the annual conference, said Marie-Josee Allard, Concordia's conference manager It's something conference organizers are seeing more often -requests to reduce the environmental impact of their gatherings. Many hotel chains have changed the way they operate in order to present themselves as more sustainable to conference-goers -by doing things like offering sustain-ably produced food, getting rid of small bottles of shampoo and lotions, serving jugs of ice water with real glasses instead of in plastic bottles. Others have gone even farther, renovating to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings or to get a coveted LEED-designation for a more eco-friendly building. Convention centres, including Montreal's Palais des Congres, have drawn up guides to organizing green meetings, looking at such issues as having "paperless" meetings, recycling, composting and using reusable dishes and cutlery.
At Concordia, other environmentally friendly moves at this month's conference included having online registration and reducing the number of registration documents printed, and giving conference-goers the option of receiving a delegate's bag or not. Organizers encouraged visitors to use public transit, providing maps for the metro and bus systems, and promoted the Bixi bike-rental service as well, Allard said.
A group of volunteer students rolled up their sleeves part way through the conference and took a look at how the more environmentally friendly waste management system was going. They sorted through bags of garbage to see whether people had sorted their recyclable and compostable materials before throwing out their trash, said Faisal Shennib, the university's environmental coordinator. One of the conclusions: there should have been more recycling and compost bins available, Shennib said, because the volunteers found recyclable water bottles and cans, as well as food that could have been composted, in the trash.

It was the first time a university conference held at Concordia had offered such extensive compostablewaste collection, with more than 50 brown bins located around the campus where conference events were taking place. More than a dozen student volunteers -calling themselves Sustainability Ambassadors and decked out in green T-shirts -hung out near the garbage, compost and recycling bins to help people figure out what to put in each one. The bins were also labelled with specially made stickers, a move that will continue even though the meeting is now over, Allard said.
"One of the challenges was educating the delegates about which bin to use," Allard said, adding that she sometimes finds herself standing in front of a recycling bin wondering whether a certain item is recyclable. "It was confusing, too, for some delegates, because where they live the recycling bins aren't blue."
The compostable food waste was taken to the university's west-end Loyola campus, where a composter will turn the food into compost to be used on the university's grounds, Allard said.
Overall, the conference was a good experiment for holding more environmentally friendly events at the university, Shennib said.
mbeaudin@thegazette.canwest.com
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Action plans
School's out this week, and we have lots of environmentally friendly ideas about how to amuse the kids in Montreal this summer. Find out more at montrealgazette.com/greenlife

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