The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has launched a city-wide boycott on bottled water.  His “London on Tap” campaign takes aim at the bottled water served to London’s citizens that costs 500 times more than tap water and is 300 times as harmful to the environment.  The problem with the bottled water is the carbon footprint left by the processing of the plastic and the distance the water travels to consumers.  Some bottled water in London traveled from as far as New Zealand.

Britain has taken a hard-line on the issue of bottled water over the past year with the British Environment Minister, Phil Woolas, calling the bottled water industry “morally unacceptable.”  Livingstone has called the high demand for bottled water “a bit of a fad” and says that consumers should not be embarrassed to ask for tap water at restaurants.

In America, we should follow suit and start our own boycott of bottled water.  By purchasing a filter for your tap water, you can have better quality water than bottled for a fraction of the cost.  Using your own, reusable, water bottle will also save the environmental damage caused by the production of the plastic used in bottled water.  It is about time we ended this “fad” and start using more environmentally friendly ways to quench our thirst.

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