Council members Eric Gioia and Simcha Felder will soon introduce a bill to ban bottled water purchases by the city. From a budgetary perspective, the city could save more than $2 million annually by eliminating the cost to buy, ship, store, and dispose of bottles. From the environmental perspective, the ban could reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in landfills as well as the fossil fuels used in transporting the bottles.
“It's a simple way to save the city money while helping out the environment,” Gioia said. According to the Container Recycling Institute, Americans buy 28 billion single-serving water bottles each year, 80 percent of which end up in landfills.
New York City has already taken steps to reduce bottled water use. “This summer, the city voluntarily banned bottled water in City Council offices,” Gioia said. “This legislation takes it a step further.”
A Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) study in 1999 ordered independent tests of more than 1,000 bottles of 103 types of bottled water nationwide. It found that one-third of those tested were contaminated with arsenic, synthetic organic compounds, and bacteria, rendering bottled water no cleaner than tap water, which is subject to Environmental Protection Agency regulations. For instance, while U.S. tap water must be checked for E. coli, a fecal bacterium, bottled water does not.
The rise of bottled water sales in the past 10 years was induced by public concerns over the safety of tap water and bottlers' claims that bottled water is purer than tap water. Gioia calls it a “fad.”
Instead, the council members suggest offices be outfitted with machines that filter tap water directly from the pipe. “It looks like a water cooler without the top [the bottle],” Felder said. “There's a thin pipe that gets connected to the regular water.” The cost runs about $400 each.
Based on the pricing scale on www.water.com, which is a company that delivers various brands of water to offices, a hot and cold dispenser costs $8 per billing period and each five-gallon bottle costs $6.99. If an office orders five bottles each week, it would spend $147.80 each month, plus any delivery costs. When compared to the cost of delivered bottled water, a $400 direct-filter machine would begin to pay for itself after three months.
Felder and Gioia will introduce the bill at the next stated council meeting.
