Drink the cool, cool water (but from a tap)

I attended the Metro Vancouver sustainability breakfast for the first time this morning. The topic was bottled water, why we should ban it, how to wean schools off it and what constitutes “pure” drinking water. I learned a bunch of facts which I can hardly sum up in this post, but here are a few highlights:

  • Vancouver water is some of the cleanest in the world, and most affordable thanks to the use of gravity to pump it from North Shore reservoirs to the faucets of Metro Vancouver.
  • Occasional turbidity is a PR headache but has never really caused any health effects for people.
  • Schools count on tens of thousands in funds from drink suppliers like Coca-Cola, whose vending machines line school hallways. The greatest challenge is to wean kids off of bottles and get them to use drinking fountains.
  • Drinking fountains and rusty tasting water is a problem, and it will be costly to fix it.
  • Nitrates are often found in hazardous quantities in bottled water around the world, especially in Asia.
  • Canada does not require bottlers to label the amounts of chemicals in bottles, but European and US regulators require it.
  • Only 65% of plastic bottles are recycled. 35% wind up in landfills. 10,000 empty plastic water bottles equals one barrel of oil.

Leaders in Metro Vancouver are working on solutions to the challenges created by these products. For now you can make a conscious choice to pledge to drink only tap water whenever possible.