In Defense of Bottled Water

This month the issue of banning bottled water has resurfaced in Metro Vancouver. Vancouver city councilor Tim Stevenson has come out in favour of a ban on bottled water at city facilities and is urging city council to pass a bylaw to that effect. And there’s talk at school boards that schools should be free of the bottles as well. Environmentalists and sanctimonious politicians have gotten out their soapboxes and are beginning to lecture us on the virtues of good old tap water. These activists insist that bottled water is evil. Water bottles are littering our cities and filling up our landfills! Producing bottles wastes energy, burns fossil fuels, and contributes to global warming! Then they charge that British Columbians are so shallow that we only drink bottled water because it’s cool. And for a final argument, they have even dragged out the old adage that Evian spelled backwards is naïve. What clever wordplay! Clearly this palindrome proves the necessity of such a ban! This idea is ridiculous and this campaign against bottled water is absurd. Firstly, it isn’t 1998; nobody drinks bottled water because it’s cool anymore. In fact, isn’t being eco-friendly all the rage right now? If so, then drinking bottled water is about as hip as leaving your Hummer idling while you go club a seal. People drink bottled water because it is convenient. Somehow this point escapes the anti-bottle zealots who keep informing us of the quality of our tap water and the necessity of bringing our own bottles from home. But sometimes I get thirsty and don’t have my reusable bottle (a stainless steel one at that) available. If I forget my bottle, all the high quality tap water in the world isn’t going to help. If I want to get some water to take with me to class or on the bus, bottled water is my only option. And some people simply do not like the taste of tap water or prefer their water to have bubbles or minerals or flavours and that’s a choice they should be allowed to make. The environmental arguments for a ban are flimsy too. Are our landfills really filling up with water bottles that should have been recycled? Encorp Pacific, the not-for-profit company that runs our beverage container recycling programs, recently disclosed that 73% of plastic beverage bottles are brought back to their depots and recycled. That’s a very high level of recycling participation by British Columbians and the last 27% could likely be captured by increasing the bottle deposit and adding more recycling depots and bins. Water bottles seem like even less of a problem when you look at the recycling rates of other waste items, such as dead batteries. Batteries can be very harmful to the environment but, according to Statistics Canada, only about 25% of them are disposed of properly. Where’s the outrage over this? Why isn’t Tim Stevenson calling for a battery ban? And as for the fossil fuel argument, I suggest we adjust our priorities. With all the environmental problems in the world, should bottled water be at the top of the list? If we are concerned about excessive burning of fossil fuels, then our governments need to improve transit, increase our hydroelectricity production, and make electric and hybrid cars cheaper and more readily available. These are real solutions to climate change; a bottled water ban is not. The politicians in our city councils and on our school boards should drop this silly idea, move on to tackling the challenges that really matter, and leave us free to drink what we want.