Banning Bottled Water

[colormist]

A tad annoyed at this.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8141569.stm

In Australia right now, but I can see this spreading elsewhere. I have no idea how many times I went thirsty as a kid because bottled water wasn't available. At fairs, my mom would ask the booths if they had water. The booth attendant would get all snarky and say that she was going to charge for the water (from the tap) because she was tired of people using up her cups on a free beverage. My mom would get snarky right back and say she didn't care and that I couldn't drink soda. That she just needed to get me a beverage. As a kid, I would always wait until I was really thirsty to ask for a drink. I knew it wasn't easy finding water unless we were in a restaurant. Nowadays you don't have to worry about that.

Bottled water isn't the problem. The problem is people not recycling the bottles. It's amazing how they would go back to only selling sugary drinks in bottles.

[Tammy]

They need to start giving people a recycling fee. I'd pay an extra nickle or dime for the bottle of water if I got the nickle back in the end. It'd make people start turning them back in. And it would make other people pick them up for the dime if they found any in the trash.

When I was just over to visit my son, we got a quarter for every big plastic bottle we turned in. I drink a lot of diet soda, so it adds up. Wish they did it here.

[colormist]

Yeah, in Michigan we have a 10-cent fee for every bottle/can we purchase. You never see any alongside the road. I would gladly pay that so they didn't remove my only option for beverage at a convenience station.

Plus, I've had water from a fountain outside. It's disgustingly hot and icky. Who knows if anyone ever cleans those things.

[charlie]

I suppose I can see their point, the recycling does need addressing, but not sure banning bottles would help cos you would just end up bying other bottled drinks if you could. We used to have glass bottles "in the olden days" as megs would say, when I was a kid and you used to get money back if you returned them but not sure that would work with the plastic ones as some break or squish very easily.
I buy bottled water but try to recycle them, they do about 5 uses on average as long as megs doesn't chew on them. I often freeze them then if we are on a day out they slowly thaw during the day, keep a picnic cool and means we still have cool water by the end of the day.
I've also never had a problem with just getting tap water, maybe we are less tight in England!!

[millan]

We have a recycling fee in Sweden. I think it's nuts not to have that.
While I also think it's nuts to start banning bottled water, I can sort of see the reasoning. When most kinds of bottled water is shipped a long way, that's not very good for the environment. Now, if bottled water could be sold "closer to home" when possible, that should save a lot on both cost and energy.

Not that I personally drink a lot of bottled water. We have excellent water here, and it's usually easy to get some free. I often have a bottle of my own tap water in my bag when I plan on being out for a while. When it's warm, I do what Charlie does, more or less. I freeze a bottle half-full, then fill it with a bit more water, and as the ice slowly thaws, I have cold water for several hours.