coolmelbourne.org

An Australian country town, Bundanoon, has voted at a community hall meeting to overwhelmingly support a proposal that it become Australia’s (if not the world’s) first bottled water free town.

Campaigners say Bundanoon, in New South Wales, may be the first community in the world to have such a ban.

They say huge amounts of resources are used to extract, package and transport bottled water and that the discarded plastic bottles then end up as litter or go into landfill sites, the "Bundy on Tap" campaign says.

All Bundy's shops have supported a ban, agreeing to lose over-the-counter income in order to combat the hefty carbon footprint associated with bottling water and trucking it around the state.

"It's also a moral thing, in that it has just been such a wonderful marketing job by the beverage industry, selling people something they can have for free," said Huw Kingston, who owns a combined cafe and bike shop in the town.

Beverage companies truthfully maintain that bottled water is a healthier alternative to fizzy soft drinks. But the plastic bottles are made from crude oil and most are thrown away rather than being refilled.

In 2006 the bottled water industry caused the release of 60,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas, a study by the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change found. Since then sales have increased; last year Australians spent about $500 million on bottled water, a 10 per cent increase on the previous year.

So how will the proposal work in practice? Well, the town’s retail businesses that previously sold single-use, bottled still water will no longer stock this product in their drinks fridges. (sparkling water, fruit juices, etc, are not effected because they are not available via the municipal water system.) Shops will alternatively make available for sale affordable, reusable, refillable water bottles. Some are even considering the option of in-store chilled water filters, so customers can access filtered water for their reusable bottles.

Additionally, with the assistance of the Bottled Water Alliance, a campaign of the activist organisation Do Something, the town will partner with Street Furniture Australia and Culligan Water to install three filtered water ‘bubblers’ or water stations. Two for the town and another for the town’s primary school. The water stations will be prominently sign-posted, and will also incorporate taps that can be used for refilling bottles. It is anticipated that most of these endeavours will be realised by October 2009, making Bundanoon effectively Australia’s first Bottled Water Free Town.

Click here to visit the 'Bundy on tap' website.

Click here for more stories about Bundy and their ban on bottled water.