City Governments Buying Less Bottled Water

June 14, 2010
With many municipal governments strapped for cash and forced to make deep budget cuts, many are targeting purchases of bottled water.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has released the preliminary findings from a national survey demonstrating that more and more cities are phasing out bottled water from city budgets. But there appears to be more to this trend that just saving money.

"These actions are not just about fiscal responsibility, they are about civic pride and protecting common resources," said Leslie Samuelrich, Corporate Accountability International Chief of Staff. "Spending taxpayer dollars on bottled water sends the wrong message about our nation's high quality tap water. It is also entirely wasteful to spend scarce public dollars on such a non-essential use of our most essential public resource."

These initial findings come on the heels of an executive order by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter cutting state spending on the bottle. Four states, including New York, Illinois, and Virginia, have now taken such action.

The survey was prompted by an earlier resolution encouraging cities to phase out bottled water spending. Up to 40 percent of bottled water, in fact, comes from the same source as the tap. Bottled water is also far less regulated. Yet bottled water marketing has been so effective that many U.S. cities responsible for delivering tap water to the public have been spending millions each year on the bottle -- even as public water systems face a $22 billion annual shortfall.

The survey found that out of 101 cities responding:

&#149 72 percent have considered eliminating or reducing bottled water purchases within city facilities;

&#149 45 percent sited "promoting public water" as the reason for taking action; and

&#149 44 percent have taken action to phase out city purchases and use of bottled water.

BPA

There's also a public health issue. Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in plastic water bottles, leaches from the bottle and ends up in the urine of people who drink from them, say researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health.

In a report last year, the researchers found that study participants who drank for a week from polycarbonate bottles, the popular, hard-plastic drinking bottles and baby bottles, showed a two-thirds increase of BPA in their urine of the chemical.

Exposure to BPA, used in the manufacture of polycarbonate and other plastics, has been shown to interfere with reproductive development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans, the researchers said.

U.S. Conference of Mayors staff has said it will continue to gather responses from its membership in the coming weeks to capture a fuller picture of city action on this issue.

For the last four years Corporate Accountability International's national education and action campaign, Think Outside the Bottle, has worked with public officials, communities of faith, campus administrators, small businesses, and individuals to support public water systems and call on the bottled water industry to honor local control of water and be more transparent about its labeling and water quality.