Plastic Water Bottles
Recently the Mayors of Salt Lake City and San Francisco banned the purchasing of the ubiquitous plastic water bottles by their cities, as a green measure to save energy. Not only does the production of these bottles consume a lot of energy – enough in this country to fuel 100000 cars for a year – but only a small percentage of these bottles are recycled. And water is heavy – not exactly a great thing to move all over the place.
So at last week’s Council meeting I brought up to Council the idea that we look into following the lead of Salt Lake and SF. Not a great reception – Kevin Lynch in particular was skeptical. We decided to have the Sustainability Committee take a look at it.
In the large scheme of things the City doesn’t use that much bottled water; more important is to get everyone in the entire City to avoid buying plastic bottles of water. I think that City action would just be a way of calling this to everyone’s attention.
We signed the Mayor’s agreement on Climate change a year ago, joining hundreds of other cities in agreeing to dramatically decrease energy use – and the only way this will work is to get the entire community, not just the government, to use less energy.
Like drinking our own water.
So at last week’s Council meeting I brought up to Council the idea that we look into following the lead of Salt Lake and SF. Not a great reception – Kevin Lynch in particular was skeptical. We decided to have the Sustainability Committee take a look at it.
In the large scheme of things the City doesn’t use that much bottled water; more important is to get everyone in the entire City to avoid buying plastic bottles of water. I think that City action would just be a way of calling this to everyone’s attention.
We signed the Mayor’s agreement on Climate change a year ago, joining hundreds of other cities in agreeing to dramatically decrease energy use – and the only way this will work is to get the entire community, not just the government, to use less energy.
Like drinking our own water.
posted by David Brown at 11:01 AM
3 Comments:
We have stopped buying bottles of water and will only do so for travel or camping going forward. Thanks for setting a great example.
Yes!!!
Ban the water bottles, and all the bottles the city buys and puts out for meetings and such. Buy biodegradable cups and serve coffee, tea, and tap water.
This may seem like a small thing, but it's a necessary step. Thanks for bringing this up.
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