The Saiko

The New York State government will phase-out bottled water in all government workplaces.  The governor, David A. Paterson, cited economic and environmental reasons.  He is not only eliminating individual bottles, he’s going after the over-sided water cooler bottles as well.  The proposed plan is to shift to the old school method of hydration:  tap water and water fountains.  We are unable to predict if local governments will fall in line and past the same regulations.

This sort of move speaks volumes.  Until now, the mainstream and municipalities have been on a full speed course of fully supplanting tap water with bottled water.  It’s worked wonders on conditioning consumers that all tap water is unsafe.  Let’s hope that Governor Paterson will set the trend for water conservation and other governors will follow by becoming green and more eco-centric.

Here’s a press release from the Governor’s office:

Bottled water is wasteful and requires large amounts of energy to bottle and transport. Over 450 million gallons of oil are used to transport water from bottling plants to stores. In the United States, plastic water bottle manufacturing uses 17 million barrels of oil, producing over 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution. Eighty percent of these bottles, which are equal to four billion pounds, end up in garbage incinerators or landfills.

New York has an abundance of tap water for consumption. Three out of four people drink bottled water on a regular basis even though many bottled water products are often just filtered tap water. In addition, for each gallon of water that goes into a plastic bottle, two gallons of water are used to make the plastic bottles and to filter the water.