Bottled water - just a fashion fad or 'morally unnacceptable'?

Last week I had a business lunch at The Park Plaza Hotel near Waterloo Station in London. Of course one accepts London prices (£6.95 for a panini or squashed toasted sandwich as my husband calls it), but when the bill came the bottled water cost £5.50!! We had asked for a glass of water, but not offered tap water, just given (and I use the word in jest) an admittedly very smart tube shaped bottle of water with a silver top. It would have made a lovely vase for a single rose on Mother's day, had they not taken it away.

So is this bottled water craze getting ridiculous? After all, why would you pay for something that comes out of the tap for free? Is it just clever marketing and scare tactics or is it safer? If you are in a country that provides perfectly good tap water (you can always buy a filter if it makes you happier) it does seem utterly pointless and just a way of putting money into fat cats' pockets (especially the supermarkets).

We drink 200 times more bottled water now than we did 30 years ago and the market is worth close to £2 billion. It seems that bottled water is ‘chic' and this was brilliantly exploited by Perrier in their 'Eau' advertising campaign, which brought Mediterranean style to our tables. And once that style was established, every kind of water became fashionable, whether it was French or English or even Tesco's own (well maybe not that). Bottled water even comes from Hawaii, Fiji and New Zealand - so imagine the carbon footprint that leaves behind.

Which brings us on to the green issue angle... Not only is the carbon footprint on bottled water dreadful - producing and delivering a litre of bottled water emits hundreds of times as much greenhouse gas as a litre of tap water - the waste disposal of the bottles is a nightmare (you only have to go to any recycling centre to see what I mean - they are always full to overflowing) and the water in the taps is absolutely fine!

In spite of all this, it's still seen as ‘cool' to drink bottled water. So in order to dispel this myth, Thames Water, together with Mayor Ken Livingstone, have launched the "London On Tap" campaign. The company wants to encourage restaurants and the public to ditch bottled water and drink good old fashioned tap water instead. Starbucks, Giraffe, Wagamama and Strada have joined up saying they will offer tap water as well as bottled water to their customers. They, as well as some Michelin starred restaurants, are pledging to help make asking for tap water more socially acceptable. Chefs Tom Aitken, Aldo Zilli, Anthony Worral Thompson and Jamie Oliver (who else) are among the earliest backing the campaign. Aitken has said that people need to be re-educated about how good tap water is.

This is a campaign that could be rolled out across the country. We'd love to know your thoughts on this. Do you buy bottled water - if so, why? Would you be embarrassed to ask for tap water in a restaurant? Do you think tap water should be readily available in restaurants? Join in the discussion in our forum - click here to join the debate But if you are still not convinced, then read on....

The environment minister, Phil Woolas, cited all these as motives for returning to the tap (although he did admit to being still partial to a drop of the fizzy stuff). But it was something else which led him to claim that bottled water was "morally unacceptable" - the discomforting fact that while we have perfectly good tap water, we spend approaching £2 billion on bottled water when a billion people around the world don't have safe water AT ALL....

In effect, we treat water as a luxury bauble while others die from its absence....

So next time you buy a bottle of Evian, think about it.

Veronika
Health & Beauty Editor

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