The world's first ban on bottled water
 

It had to happen sooner or later... :)

World's First Ban on Bottled Water - Global One TV

Great :)
I wanna move there, asap!

I thought San Francisco banned it last year.

Did a quick search. San Francisco and Seattle banned the purchase of bottled water by the city itself so the ban is not as extensive.

I feel bad that it takes a "ban" on bottled water for people to realize how much garbage they're creating for tap water in a bottle. And it's not even any more convenient! Where's the argument for bottled water again?

You're travelling, you've got an 8 hour train/plane ride ahead of you, so you buy a bottle of water at the train station/airport. (I know, I know: with recent security measures you can't take more than 100ml or 200ml of liquids, but I'm still in the good ol' days.)

As for tap water: I've been drinking it for the last few years and have hardly drunk from a bottle for the last 6-8 months. Dad-in-law recently bought one of those Britta filters for filtering tap water before boiling it! And I'm drinking straight from the faucet. Anyway, the Wife and I had a talk with him, after which we checked our water quality on the utility's webpage. Warsaw filters its water from the river, but our neighborhood has a deep well for about 1000 homes. The quality of our water is three times better than the rest of the city and is compareable to bottled spring water. We don't need a filter. Of course, the water for the rest of the city is also within limits for safe drinking.

About 6-7 years ago a local law was passed which stated that every liquid product, available in a disposable bottle, must also be available in a returnable container. It never got off the ground. For a short time I saw milk in a glass bottle (only one company), but it was not returnable. The others never showed. The companies complained that they can't have products in returnable containers as there is no infrastructure for collecting, the cost of production will be so high they will lose money, people don't want returnable bottles and won't buy them, etc., etc. All a bunch of BS, since they didn't even try, so how would they know? I've heard that other countries (Holland, Switzerland) have returnable container programs which work quite well, so it's not like the technology has to be researched from the ground up. As far as I know, the law hasn't been killed, it's just forgotten: nobody enforces it so nobody obeys it. Sort of like speed limits :(

Many states in the US have "bottle deposits" where you pay an extra nickel for your drink, then when you return the bottle, you get that nickel back.

The program en masse is a fail, but it gives incentive for homeless people to pick up the city's trash, because they actually make a hell of a living off those nickels. It's amazing how little you can live on when you don't pay rent or bills.

I remember the time when there was a deposit for beer bottles, and how people would collect them. I once saw guys with wheelbarrows collecting beer bottles after a concert. But in the mid '90's new beers showed up without deposits for the bottle, because they either weren't brown, or they weren't 500ml (brown 500ml was the only kind used by domestic breweries, and the bottle factories weren't geared for making other types, so green glass wouldn't even get recycled). Then came aluminum cans, and recently plastic bottles. It's been years since I last heard of bottle deposits here :(

The closest thing is collecting aluminum cans and selling them at the local scrapmetal yard, for the equivalant of US$1 for 1.5kg. There's about 40-60 cans per kg. A nickel per bottle is a much better investment. When I take the dog to the woods every morning, or when I walk the Wife to the train station, I notice discarded beer cans everywhere. Just as a test, I decided to start collecting them. I'm checking how much beer people drink on their way home from the store on the corner, and clean the woods at the same time. After 1 month I've got over 100 cans. I'm not even trying. Sad.

There was a time when I was younger that my Father had no work, and not enough money for us to survive. I used to go out and walk the highway collecting cans, and for ~4 months, we ate only what we could afford with that money. We ate well, as I recall.

I could pick up anything up to $15 a day in cans without really trying, and that's walking the same areas once a week.