Kicking The Bottle To Go Green
At the Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., customers can indulge in baked quail, grilled squab and wines from around the world. But if bottled water — a fine-dining fixture — is your libation of choice, you’re out of luck.
The eatery is joining a growing list of restaurants kicking the bottle for environmental reasons. And some city governments are getting into the act as well.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom last month signed an executive order prohibiting city departments from buying bottled water, saying the move would save taxpayers money and be good for the planet.
“Each year, people are drinking 30 billion throwaway bottles of water,” said the Sierra Club’s Ruth Caplan. “If you put them end to end, it would go around the world more than 150 times.”
Caplan said four out of five plastic water bottles end up in landfills, but even before they get there, they’ve taken a toll on the environment.
To get to a store shelf in Chicago, for instance, a bottle of water from France must first travel more than 5,000 miles on ships and in trucks. And because water is heavy, transporting it requires a lot of fuel.
Photo by PhotoDisc.
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