London To Ban Bottled Water At City-Run Facilities, Toronto Next?
Tuesday August 19, 2008
CityNews.ca Staff
The bottled water backlash is alive and well in Ontario and on Monday the City of London demonstrated as much by becoming the latest Canadian municipality to hatch plans to eliminate the popular products.
The London city council has voted to stop the sale of bottled water at all city-run facilities including office buildings, arenas and community centres and possibly even golf courses.
In fairness the restrictions will be phased in over the next few months and will only apply to buildings appropriately equipped with drinking fountains, but the change could have serious implications for cities like Toronto, where movements to oppose bottled water have long been afoot.
The once-trendy treat has come under heavy fire of late, and London joins school boards in Toronto, Ottawa, Waterloo and Vancouver in its efforts to restrict the packaged H2O.
At the centre of the matter are concerns relating to the fossil fuels used to produce and transport the plastic bottles, which for their part end up in landfills by the millions. Torontonians alone are estimated to consume 100 million bottles of water each year. Roughly 65 per cent of those are recycled, but the rest - 35 million or so - wind up on the trash heap.
More at: http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_25960.aspx
