Yeah, this’ll work!
San Francisco, the city that regulated Happy Meal toys and banned plastic grocery bags, has a new target in its health-conscious, eco-friendly crosshairs: plastic water bottles.
City officials are considering an ordinance that would require owners of new and renovated buildings with water fountains to install special bottle-filling taps. The law’s designed to encourage thirsty people to refill containers instead of reaching for another bottle of Evian or Aquafina.
When I worked the convention last month I always had a bottle of water on me. Actually on day one when I spent the first half of the day getting things set up, but before I could get my gear out of my car, I got myself more than a bit dehydrated, and when I finally got my bottle out I was draining it constantly before I got back to normal levels.
Given that I’m both cheap, and since the Portland Maine water supply is as good as most of the bottled water out there, I generally don’t use bottled water. We also don’t have those fancy-pants spigots to fill the bottles from. I’d just step into the bathroom and put my bottle under the sink.
Drinking tap water from a re-usable bottle was something I wanted to do, and I took action. What makes these fools think that a fancy piece of expensive hardware (at public expense from a city that really doesn’t have monies to spare) will help?
Ahh, the nanny-state at its best!
h/t Mrs. Weer’d
Stupid. Water bottles are about the most recycle-able items in the universe. It may actually cost less to melt them down and turn them into something else than it does to wash a reusable bottle in a dishwasher.
I’m cheap, too. And I pretty much stick to tap water. I use a plastic water bottle, refilling it from the tap, until it gets gross. Then I toss it and start over. We use a sharpie to write our names on “our” bottles, too. Keeps the cups used to a minimum. 🙂 That being said, I do appreciate the bottle-filling taps at my university, though they’re not new (one of the older buildings has a couple). It makes it easier to fill up the bottle, I don’t have to go into the truly disgusting bathrooms, and I’m not hogging the water fountain (or “bubblah” ;)), in case someone just wants a quick drink (it takes a LONG time to fill up a bottle using the standard water fountain.)
One word: NALGENE.
I hear it’s different in other places of the country, but they’re so ubiquitous here that it has become the generic term for a water bottle.
Their brains believe that people WANT to reuse the disposable bottles for other things, but that it’s too inconvenient.
Therefor if they make reuse easy, then everyone will.
Give it a few years and when nobody is using the special taps that they begin requiring that a bottle supply be installed near the fountains.
Yeah that’s just it, we’re all carrying empty bottles, and just CAN’T manage to fill them.
Honestly the hard part is carrying around that bottle….so people buy a bottle of water when they’re thirsty…then with their thirst slaked they don’t have a need for the bottle, so they pitch it….rinse repeat!
One word: Cargo pants!
I reuse water and soda bottles–they make excellent reactive targets. That’s not what the City of San Fransisco wants, I suspect.
The real irony will come when San Fran wind up getting rid of half of their water supply for the sake of “the environment” by demolishing that one dam, and folks will have to buy bottled water during the inevitable water shortages.
I am glad that the government of San Francisco believes that their employers and corporations have nothing better to spend their money on.
Y’know, like that whole “creating jobs” thing…