According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the domestic bottled water market increased by over 18 percent from 2004 to 2005, and another 13 percent in 2006. That's 2.15 billion litres. Bottled water is a rapidly growing part of Canada's commercial beverage marketplace, increasing its share of total beverages to 9.1 percent (2006) from 5 percent (2000). In addition, Canada is a major exporter of bottled water. Carbonated soft drinks are still ahead, but shrinking, seeing a decline in volume to 15.1 percent from 16.5 percent of commercial beverages.

Bottled water marketers pitch their product as a "healthier" alternative to conventional soft drinks. They also hint that bottled water is healthier than tap water, although this is rarely the case in Canada according to sources such as Health Canada.

Tap water is, of course, far cheaper. And as to environmental impact, tap water wins, hands down! The manufacture and transportation of bottled water consumes vast amounts of energy, often estimated at one-quarter bottle of oil per bottle of water. Water pumped for sale in bottles often has adverse environmental effects. Bottled water often leaves the watershed from where it was taken, upsetting local water balances. Water bottlers typically take this precious public resource without paying for it, since there is no royalty on water as there is for oil. And then there is the litter problem, which is unsightly on land and deadly at sea. In 2006, the U.N. Environment Programme reported that over 46,000 bits of plastic litter float on every square mile of ocean. Visit www.unep.org.

Some cities and school boards ban the bottle

Much of the environmental impact of bottled water falls upon municipalities; 80 percent of plastic bottle waste goes to landfills. And bottled water competes directly with the municipal supply of water. Yet many municipalities have succumbed to the habit of serving bottled water – I've even seen bottled water served in a municipal water plant! Shamefully, a recent news article claims that schools with beverage sales agreements had fewer working water fountains than those without.

On August 18, the city council of London, Ontario, set an important precedent when it voted to ban sales of single-use bottled water in municipal facilities. That included meetings at City Hall, the City Hall cafeteria, and all city-owned or administered concessions or vending machines "where tap water is easily available."

Some other municipalities are moving down the same road. Charlottetown Council switched to tap water in 2007. In 2008, the city council of St. John's, Newfoundland, passed a motion that only tap water will be provided at City Hall. The city council in Nelson, British Columbia, banned single-use plastic bottles in city facilities. School boards in Waterloo and Ottawa-Carleton will ban sale of single-use plastic water bottles in their schools, starting September 2009.

Vancouver and Toronto are considering eliminating bottled water, investing in reusable water containers and increasing the number of drinking fountains. Montreal is one of the few to rule out a bottle ban; instead, it will try to increase bottle-recycling rates, likely through a deposit system.

In those places with safe municipal drinking water, bottle bans and public fountains are simple, effective ways to reduce our public and private environmental footprint. Now that the courts are giving municipalities more freedom to regulate, watch for many more Canadian municipalities to follow the lead of Charlottetown, Nelson and London. PE