By Celsias team
Posted on May 25, 2010. Listed in:
Concord, Massachusetts is following in the footsteps of the Australian town of Bundanoon, and banning bottled water.
Fittingly, Concord was the home of transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau, whose book Walden, or Life in the Woods, and its message of living simply has been a core inspiration for many top sustainable thinkers.
But the move has provoked the threat of legal action from the International Bottled Water Association which says its product is being unfarily victimised.
BusinessGreen.com has this:
The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) is threatening legal action against the town of Concord, Massachusetts, after the municipality banned the sale of bottled water late last month.
Concord enacted the ban on the sale of bottled water products on 30 April, and the measure is now scheduled to come into effecton 1 January next year.
Under the new regulation, the town has banned the sale of bottled water on the grounds that the containers are not reusable. It will continue to allow the sale of refillable containers of water, but non-reusable containers will be prohibited, even if they are recyclable.
In response to the move, the IBWA cited figures from the US Environmental Protection Agency showing them that plastic bottled water containers are recycled at a rate of 30.9 per cent, making them the single most recycled item.
The trade group also argued that the industry was being unfairly victimised. "Bottled water is one of thousands of food, medicinal, beauty and cleaning products packaged in plastic," it said in a statement. "Any efforts to reduce the environmental impact of consumer packaging must focus comprehensively [on] all product containers and not single out any one product."
However, Jean Hill, an 82 year-old activist who led the initiative to enact the ban, argued that bottled water represents a special case because water is freely available through the public system, unlike other bottled products.
But the IBWA responded that water offers benefits when compared to many other bottled drinks. "With the current high rates of diabetes, obesity and heart disease, any actions that discourage or prevent consumers from drinking water – whether tap or bottled – are not in the public interest," it said.
Other towns and cities such as Seattle and San Francisco limit spending on bottled water, but Concord is the first municipality to enact an outright ban on sales of the product.
The IBWA may have little to worry about if the state of Massachusetts fails to approve the ban, as the measure may require approval from a higher level of government.
However, there are also fears within the industry that the move could set a precedent for other towns and cities to follow.
