This opinion is a little bleat but still relevant to the climate debate because so often our response to climate change is about attitudes.  There were 10,000 delegates at the Bali Climate Conference that began a roadmap for the next emissions treaty.  That is probably a fair description of two weeks' work. How many, one wonders, drank bottled water?  And if they did, how many might have put that into their carbon footprint?  I suspect too few.

Bottled water is becoming a real scourge in the modern world.  The environmental cost of having a much needed commodity bottled when it is already at your doorstep shouldn't be ignored.  Water is now bottled and transported everyhere.  Water from Fiji is easily available in London and New York and apart from the airmiles in getting it there, there is also an enormous waste problem that is bottled water.  Plastic containers are always the waste product of bottled water. 

In Australia, Manly Council, based in Sydney, is proposing to ban bottled water at its famous Manly Beach.  Bottled water it argues is not environmentally friendly and too often empty and fuller bottles are washed up on the beach.  The idea sounds a little excessive but the logic might well be right.  Why do we think bottled water is better?  Why do we pay for it?  Why in a resturant do we feel it is better than a glass of "Thames" tap water?

Manly Council might be onto to a good idea if it can, while banning bottled water, find another way of serving what is a perceived need.  Here might be an opportunity for a new business, sponsored by business.  Water fountains that provided purified water at street corners where the water is ionised before it hits your reusable bottle.  Sponsored water could be free, reusable containers could be sold or sponsored. 

 The technology to purify water at distribution exists in offices, it could be on the street.  If Manly Council supplemented a ban with a pure water sevice on its streets, if may be onto a good thing.  Less bottled water for all sorts of reasons must be the right way to go.