Tapping into Drinking Water
Remember drinking water fountains? I still see them in public venues such as schools, conference centers, hotels, and airports.
At the 129th American Water Works Association meeting at McCormick in Chicago this week, the association set out water stations. You know, the big coolers you see people who work outdoors carry with them on trucks. These weren't orange, they were a conservative brown. I picked up a plastic cup and had some water. It tasted great and it was cold ─ just the thing I needed after walking the hall most of the morning.
Denis Hayes
"It is so wonderful to go to a conference where there is no bottled water," said Denis Hayes, the opening session speaker who is well known for his role in coordinating the first Earth Day and is now president and chief executive officer of the Bullitt Foundation.
The full audience, of course, applauded.
Hayes had more to say about bottled water. "In the U.S.” he said, “marketing triumphed over common sense.” He said the country purchases 1,000 bottles a second, or about 30 billion a year. He even suggested that environmentalists and water managers could work together on this "issue."
What's your stand on bottled water? Do you think it is an issue?
Posted by L.K. Williams, EPonline on Jun 23, 2010