Martin Mittelstaedt, The Globe and Mail, March 5, 2009 - The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is considering a new policy to urge all cities and towns across the country to ban bottled water within their facilities, arguing that the product is bad for the environment.
A vote on the proposal is expected on Saturday at a board meeting in Victoria, and is another sign of the growing antipathy among municipal officials to bottled water because of the increased burden on garbage dumps, recycling systems and anti-litter efforts.
Twenty-seven municipalities in six provinces have passed restrictions on sales of bottled water on their properties, according to a tabulation by the Ottawa-based Polaris Institute, a public-interest group that is lobbying local governments to implement such bans.
“Canada-wide, we are drowning in a sea of garbage,” said Glenn De Baeremaeker, a Toronto city councillor who supports the national ban. “There is no need for bottled water … ecologically, it's a disaster.”
Under the motion, municipalities would be urged not to buy bottled water for their own use, or have it dispensed at vending machines or other retail outlets on city properties.
The ban would not apply to stores, where most of the products are bought, so the measure would likely lead to only a small reduction in consumption, although it would have major symbolic importance.
The big worry among municipalities is the packaging waste. Even though recycling is widely available, and the bottles can be reused, between 40 and 80 per cent of the containers end up as litter or in dumps. Trucking the water around also causes air pollution.
Besides Toronto, one of the other municipalities to support the nationwide ban is the Town of Blue Mountains, which passed the first regulation in Canada restricting the product.
Where tap water is of good quality, it is “plain common sense” for municipalities to ban the bottles from their premises, said Ellen Anderson, mayor of the town in Ontario's Georgian Bay area.
She said local governments shouldn't be using bottles when “we have perfectly good drinking water” from municipal systems.
“The motion was not meant to damn the [bottled water] industry. The motion was meant to think practically and environmentally,” Ms. Anderson said.
Joe Cressy, a spokesman for the Polaris Institute, said the move against bottled water is similar to anti-smoking bylaws, which were also pioneered by municipal governments and then spread. “We're reaching in our estimation a tipping point” on bottled water, he said.